


The Pink Book of Joy

by Madoshi



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Assisted Suicide, Canon Compliant, Forced Suicide, Lance (Voltron) is a Ray of Sunshine, M/M, Mind Control, Minor Character Death, Monte Negro (I just love this country), Oblivious Lance (Voltron), Oral Sex, Pining Keith (Voltron), Post-Canon Fix-It, Religious Cults, Romance, Smut, Sometimes Literally, Space Battles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:20:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22333297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madoshi/pseuds/Madoshi
Summary: ...Personally, Keith thought that “The Pink Book of Joy” was a very stupid title. But the readers from the numerous galaxies didn’t share his opinion. In the first quintant after the initial launch of the promotional campaign for Lance's book, the number of sold copies jumped into zillions.It took Keith almost two years to realize what Lance meant in his memoirs and come visit him at his farm, daring to hope. But now he is not the only one who wants Lance for himself. (Fans are a force to be reckoned with, especially the supposed 'true believers'.)
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 78
Kudos: 87





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Розовая книга радости](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18441710) by [Madoshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madoshi/pseuds/Madoshi). 



> Huge thanks to my awesome beta crumbcake, who, as always, helped me to transform my clumsy English into something resembling fluency :)
> 
> Full disclosure: before you start reading, be advised that I might not finish — or might not finish in a reasonable timeframe. The Russian original version is completed, and I fully intend to finish this translation too. But at the moment I'm battling a difficult pregnancy, and, in all honesty, I have no idea how much time and capacity I will have for translating in the coming months. I'll still try to update at least once a week :) 
> 
> This story means a lot to me: I started writing it right after VLD was over, literally the same night. And it's what helped me to cope with the heartache after that ending (which I liked, by the way, but still needed to fix in my head :D ). So I really hope I'll make it till the end, and you'll enjoy it as much as I was enjoying writing it :)

The trip to visit Lance almost went down the drain.

To be more precise, Keith almost changed his mind midway to his destination. In hindsight, that would have been extremely stupid of him: to arrange a proper vacation for the first time in years, to borrow a shuttle capable of flying both in space and in atmosphere, to endure the many hour long wormhole queue on a non-preferential basis (he could have called Pidge and she would have opened him a VIP channel, but he didn’t want to advertise his presence on Earth) — and to botch all these efforts just a couple of thousand miles from his goal!

But the problem was, Keith didn’t know where to find Lance on Earth.

He was standing at the info kiosk in the Central Spaceport, with Cosmo and a crumpled travel bag sitting at his feet, his head empty, looking at the panel that prompted “Please input the full name of the person you wish to find here,'' at a loss of what to do.

He slowly typed in “Lance”.

After a brief deliberation, the system displayed the message, “4,238,980 results found. Do you wish to see details?”

Keith growled under his breath and typed “paladin Lance”.

This time the results were less numerous, hardly several thousand. The first one was a coffee shop in Melbourne called “Paladins’ Guesthouse”, owned by a Lancelot Gimenez. Keith cursed the modern system of privacy protection; when he was a schoolboy, such a request would generally gain him everything there was to know about Lance, including his Wikipedia page and (probably) a fanclub official site. Not now, not on the Earth still under construction.

Yes, it was extremely stupid of him: Keith had no idea what Lance’s last name was!

Well, he must have known it at some point, they did attend the same classes, for god’s sake! But many years have passed, and Keith could hardly remember anyone’s names from back then. Besides, he never needed Lance’s last name. Yes, sure, he remembered Hunk’s. It would be hard not to, with the ads of his culinary empire spilling from every small appliance (the microwave ads were the worst)! He remembered Pidge’s, mostly due to Commander Holt, but still. And, of course, he would never forget Shiro’s. But Lance was another matter.

Despite being overly loud and a general pain in the ass, he never talked that much about himself. And later, he left the world stage entirely, having done everything within his power to be forgotten, seemingly on purpose. Well, if not for the book.

His last name was probably of latino origin, right?

To be on the safe side, Keith tapped the first result, that of the coffee shop. There was a picture of the owner on the first page of their official site — a middle-aged kindly looking plump man with a luxurious grey moustache.

Anyway, what was he hoping to achieve? Even if he knew the name, the kiosk wouldn’t show him neither an address, nor a phone number, he’d need to make an official inquiry for that. Still, it felt incredibly wrong that he didn’t know.

Keith had no idea where to look for Lance’s farm either. Lance issued them all a broad invitation many times, every year, in fact, and, as far as Keith knew, Hunk, Pidge, Shiro and Coran — basically everybody — took him up on it more than once. Afterwards, Hunk gushed excitedly about ecologically sustainable produce Lance’s family grew, Shiro admired the serenity and natural beauty, and Pidge complained about bad sunburn. But for Keith, the circumstances were never right somehow. He either didn’t have time, or it seemed too awkward to go… He never even learnt in what hemisphere Lance lived now. He was fairly certain it wasn’t on Cuba, since Galra bombed to dust the whole Carribean basin. Even on the mainland, parts of Texas and South America were flooded, and most of the islands ceased to exist altogether.

“We probably should go back,” Keith looked at Cosmo.

Cosmo looked at him accusingly.

Keith caved in and called Pidge.

The funniest thing was that there were posters for Lance’s book looking at Keith from half the window displays! Most of them were garish pink. There were even some paper books in stock, the ads said. Crazy.

But no poster mentioned Lance by name. Just a simple line: “Red Paladin’s memoirs!”. As if Lance and who he was didn’t matter, except for his role on the team.

***

On that awful day more than ten years ago, they returned to Atlas completely shellshocked. Everything felt disjointed, surreal. A strangely familiar blue ball of Altea in viewports, looking very much like Earth. Familiar smells of ozone, food from the canteen and sweat from the gym in the halls — the air ducts were probably slightly malfunctioning again. But among all these familiarity the most familiar, the most essential thing was no more. There was no Allura.

Somehow, Lance kept himself together. Shiro was quick to offer rest for everybody, no debriefing. He said he was going to settle things himself. Iverson and Curtis were all for it, but argued that Shiro needed his rest too, they were perfectly able to handle the situation from here. But Lance disagreed. He said, no need. They could help — and they would. Keith just went along with it.

So, for many hours they answered urgent calls from different star systems, resolving situations around evacuated Alteans, checking Honerva’s blown-to-pieces “doom’s day pyramid” for nasty surprises...

Lance held up throughout the day — however long that day really took, Keith had no idea. His replies were always curt and to the point, he never joked or smiled. But he seemed alright.

“Let’s get together somewhere private,” Hunk suggested when they finished with the first landslide of urgent matters and had several hours to rest. “How about… well, at Allura’s? Or at my place? I don’t think any of us should be alone right now.”

“Sorry, buddy,” Lance shook his head and smiled faintly. “But being alone is something I really need at the moment, OK? So how about a raincheck? For tomorrow?”

Keith didn’t like it one bit. Lance had already cried in their presence before, he was never too shy about such things. Why would he decide to be alone all of a sudden? Ordinarily, if he didn’t feel well, he’d always go and look for someone. Usually Hunk or Pidge, or, lately, Keith. Or Allura.

Keith was lying awake that night, mind swinging from topic to topic: about Allura, about war, about how to deal with the remnants of the empire now, and if it would be possible to persuade former Warlord Lahn to work propaganda, and about Allura again. Which inevitably meant thinking about Lance and how he was going to cope from now on. Hunk was right, he really shouldn’t be left alone. Maybe if Keith offered him to work with Galra rehabilitation efforts too… No, quiznack, a bad idea. Galra thought that humans were weaklings, and most of them couldn’t stand Alteans — understandably so. Whichever way you look at it, it would be very hard for Lance to form working relationships with them. Especially with those marks on his cheekbones.

For some reason, Keith couldn’t stop thinking about a stupid scenario: let’s say some galra decides that Lance really is an altean and throws him against the wall in anger, but without an intent to kill. A real altean would brush himself off and return the favor, but from Lance there will be nothing left.

Or is Lance now physically Altean too..? Is it OK to ask him?

After two or three vargas of such delightful pastime, Keith decided to go to Lance’s quarters. He was sure Lance wasn’t sleeping.

Lance, indeed, was awake.

The door obediently opened when Keith pressed his palm to the sensor. It was an obvious precaution: both Keith and Shiro had the right to enter any room on the ship.

It was dark inside, with only the dim glow of a blue light, coming from a lamp beside the bed. Keith immediately heard muffled noises and smelled wet fabric. Lance was lying face down on the bed, with his blanket over his head and his shoulders trembling.

“Lance! Buddy!”

No reaction.

Keith came up to the bed, where he had to peel the blanket off Lance’s head himself. It appeared Lance was clenching the pillow in his teeth and hands, and Keith was forced to almost tear it off. Without the pillow gagging him, it became apparent that Lance was well beyond sobbing; he was moaning hoarsely, his throat sore from crying. The bedside lamp cast a blue tint on everything, and Lance’s altean marks looked like scars under his puffy, pained eyes.

Lance didn’t say anything, didn’t complain about Keith’s intrusion. He just clenched Keith’s arms as he had done with the pillow before, and moaned something into his stomach. His shoulders started to tremble even stronger, and Keith felt wetness on his pajama top. He awkwardly patted Lance’s head, absolutely at a loss at what to do. Strangely, he didn’t feel any emotional turmoil at that moment. He even sensed an improper, bitter laugh growing inside of him; as if the situation was somehow stupid and merited a chuckle.

“Lance, let me go, please,” Keith tried to unclench his hands.

Now Lance moaned something close to “don’t go”.

“I’m not going anywhere, I swear. I’ll just bring you some water from the bathroom. Ok? You’re dehydrated.”

Lance either nodded or shook his head, Keith wasn’t entirely sure.

Anyway, Lance’s fingers unclenched, letting Keith take two steps to the tiny half-bathroom: a toilet and a wash basin, not suited for anything substantial; for a shower, you had to go to the communal facilities. 

On the small shelf above the basin were two glasses with toothbrushes and a cruelly tortured tube of toothpaste. It was half rolled up, as if someone tried to carefully squeeze the paste, half crumpled mercilessly. Keith wondered who had a problem with the tube, Lance or Allura? They both always seemed so neat...

On the basin there was a hairbrush, full of white hair. So Allura was the slob. Or maybe she just didn’t have the chance to clean up after herself?

For a moment, Keith felt a wave of sickness so strong he almost sat on the floor and wailed.

But he made himself take the toothbrush out of one of the glasses — they both seemed identical, how did they know which was whose? — and filled it with tap water. Then he brought the glass to Lance.

Keith had to support Lance’s shoulders, as he couldn’t seem to hold the glass at first. But he soon calmed down, his grasp became more firm, his shoulders straightened.

Keith could do nothing except continue to hold him.

“Thank you for being here,” Lance said suddenly.

“You’re welcome,” Keith pulled him closer, not wishing to let go.

He was surprised with himself when he consciously leaned in and inhaled the scent of Lance’s hair. It still smelled faintly like Allura’s perfume.

“Keith, I…” Lance’s hand was perched on his thigh, his head lolled on his shoulder again. “You know, you have to talk to her.”

“To who?” Keith’s fingers clenched on Lance’s arm on his own volition.

“Axca. I know, the war is still going on, and everything is in ruin, and it’s never the right time… but… you never know how much time you have left.”

“I don’t love Axca,” Keith cut him off. Then, feeling a lie in his words, he corrected himself, “Not the way you love Allura. She is my friend.”

When Lance and Allura got together, Keith started to imagine that maybe he, too, will be able to have something with Axca. But the only thing that came out of his clumsy attempts was mutual awkwardness.

“Does she know that?”

Honestly, Keith couldn’t tell. He thought she knew, but lately he made it a rule to always listen to Lance’s concerns.

“I’ll talk to her,” he agreed.

Lance squeezed his leg.

It dawned on Keith that those fingers were touching his inner thighs, with only one thin layer of sleeping pants between his and Lance’s skin. And that, despite his tears and sweat and Allura’s perfume, Lance’s unique scent was still overpowering and oh so good, and Lance’s warmth seemed so tempting. What a novel feeling. He realized with a start that it would be oh so nice right now to hug him even closer, to nuzzle his neck...

Quiznack, what a poorly timed urge! Lance would beat him up, rightly so, and Keith was not going to defend himself.

And why would his body choose this moment to betray him, of all times?! Keith never thought about Lance like that. Truthfully, he never had any hormonal induced desires at all about anybody. Maybe that’s why it was so awkward with Axca after all. If he hadn’t had night emissions from time to time, Keith would consider himself asexual. Actually, he read that asexuals had these physiological reactions too, so it still left the question open.

“Your heart is beating faster,” Lance said out of the blue, in a surprised tone. “And you’re breathing heavier.”

“Sorry,” Keith forced out. “It’ll go away in a minute.”

Lance suddenly turned around in his embrace like a cat, so that they were face to face. He touched his wet fingers to Keith’s cheek.

“If I’m reading this wrong, just shove me off,” he whispered haltingly. “I…wouldn’t do this if it was anyone else… but it’s you, do you understand?”

And he kissed Keith.

If Keith hadn’t frozen so thoroughly at the moment, he’d definitely shove Lance away. He briefly wondered if Lance was mad with grief, or what the hell possessed him to think it was a good idea to kiss Keith the very same day Allura died! The thing was, Keith knew for a fact that she was Lance’s first. He was also absolutely sure Lance never cheated on her, he didn’t even look sideways at the other girls! Even before they got together, Lance flirted with others only jokingly. Well, maybe, excluding Nyma, but it was so long ago that it didn’t seem entirely true anymore.

Besides, Keith would never think Lance as bi. He always insisted on liking girls so much...

But the kiss was hot, wet and so desperate, as if Lance was grasping at Keith using the last ounces of strength, swaying on the precipice. Keith couldn’t let him fall alone; so they fell together.

They kissed, as far as Keith could judge, for a whole eternity. He didn’t, couldn’t think of anything else. The universe didn’t exist. Honerva could very well destroy all the threads of the multiverse down to the very last one, he didn’t care. The only thing he perceived at the moment was this bright bubble of mixed up feelings, of his and Lance’s bodies tangled together. Without their shared grief, without the victims of war they had on their conscience, without their uncharted future...

But then Lance said, “Let me…”, and pulled down the band of Keith’s sleeping pants. It immediately appeared Keith had an erection. He suddenly intimately understood the term raging boner, his arousal so hot and urgent he almost cried tears of sweet pain-pleasure when Lance touched it.

Keith tried to reciprocate, he even managed to divest Lance of his pajama bottoms, but when he took his dick in his fist — it was unexpectedly thin, long and wet — Lance hissed painfully. Not a surprise, since Keith never held anyone else’s dick, and even with his own he dealt swiftly and efficiently.

“I can’t believe there is something you’re not just naturally good at, samurai,” Lance joked with his throat hoarse. “Look, just like that…”

He grasped both their cocks in his palm.

Lance’s long and deft fingers made his very soft flesh rub maddeningly good against Keith’s, and he thought for a moment he was going to explode from sheer relief and utter bliss.

And he did blow up, and Lance licked their mutual release from his fingers, and started to kiss Keith again, as if he couldn’t get enough.

Somewhere between the kisses they fell asleep, without straightening their clothes, in each other’s arms.

When Keith woke up the next morning, Lance’s hair was in his mouth. He tried to spit it out, coughed. Lance woke up too and snorted.

“Huh, you’re funny,” he chuckled. “And cute. I’d never thought you’d be cute.”

“Shut up,” Keith muttered. “I gotta piss.”

He shoved Lance off himself to gracelessly flop off the bed, and went to the half-bathroom. 

When he was at the door, he heard, “Thank you for yesterday. I needed that. Badly.”

Keith turned around, feeling his cheeks heat up. “It’s nothing.”

“Do you regret it?” Lance was looking straight at him.

Keith shrugged. “I have nothing to regret, if you don’t.”

Lance grinned, broad, but mirthless. “Not in the slightest. It really had to be you. And now I’m in my head again. I decided what I’m going to do.”

“Yes?” Keith paused near the small washbasin without turning on the tap. Again, he saw the hairbrush and thought about hiding it.

“I’m going back to Earth,” said Lance. “Well, not right away, of course, I need to help clean this mess up, but afterwards. Do you think juniberries are going to survive in our soil if tended right?”


	2. Chapter 2

Somehow Keith expected Lance to settle closer to the sea. He loved to swim and surf, and the Blue lion was the guardian of the water… But the farm was located pretty far away from the coast, in a mountain valley. Well, for the shuttle Keith borrowed the distance was not too great, two minute flight, tops. But it would probably take several hours by hovercar.

However, it surely felt peaceful. The tranquil ambience was so tangible Keith could swear he felt it even in the air.

He quickly found a small town with no high-rises and an equally small, almost toy-like church on the hill, surrounded by the motley strips of farm fields. In the hot afternoon the sun reflected brightly in the windows and the roof solar panels, as if preparing them for some kind of festivities. 

Keith easily recognized the farm that belonged to Lance’s parents. It was farther from the town and somewhat higher in the mountains than most, but they found enough flat land to grow juniberries — two big garishly-pink fields, very distinctive among others that were green and yellowish. Hunk told Keith it was a profitable fare, but not an easy one: the juniberries didn’t take well to non-Altean soils. Which was a pity, since they were a valuable ingredient for different sweets and teas, even some medicines.

That’s why Keith was a little surprised when he landed his shuttle near the house and saw the rare and capricious plants growing everywhere, like weeds. They covered the whole ground till the very house like a pink carpet, with barely visible paths cutting through to barns and other farm buildings.

Well, whatever else they were, they smelled heavenly.

Lance, clad in an oversized grey t-shirt and patched jeans, hurried to meet him, while trying to clean his soiled hands with an old rag. Keith saw him last less than a year ago, on the most recent Allura’s day. Lance didn’t — couldn’t — change much since then. But Keith caught himself searching his face, as if looking for some new hidden features.

“At long last!” Lance caught his hand in a firm handshake, which he promptly turned into an equally firm bear hug, that smelled like clean dirt and sun. “And here I was thinking that you avoided Earth on purpose, like the lone wolf you are!”

Having heard the word “wolf”, Cosmo perked his ears and woofed softly. Lance turned to him, smiled even broader and scratched him between the ears.

“I’m glad to see you too! Whozza good boy? Whozza best boy in the multiverse?”

Cosmo, temporarily the size of a big shepherd dog, woofed happily, wagged his tail and was evidently all for being a good boy for Lance. That thought made something inside Keith melt a little.

“It’s not that I’m avoiding anything,” Keith said, gulping. “It’s just, I didn’t have an occasion to visit.” He tried for levity, to mask his sudden awkwardness, “But I couldn’t in good conscience not visit our main sponsor!”

Lance laughed. Keith always liked his laugh, but now Lance seemed luminous with some soft secret light, as if he realized something important about himself and the world. “It’s nice of you to say so. But I know for a fact you get donations from the whole star systems.”

Keith raised an eyebrow. “Believe it or not, for the last twenty phoebs ‘The Pink Book of Joy’ brought us more dough than five or six planets put together.”

Lance’s expression abruptly changed, he even whistled. “Really? I’ll be damned, what a royalty!”

“Didn’t you know that?!”

“No, dude, why would I? I told my agents right away, they are to send all the money to the Marmora Foundation, and was done with it. Damn, if I knew it brings that much, we wouldn’t have taken that loan for a new harvester last year!”

Keith didn’t know if he wanted to laugh, cry or growl in aggravation. Next to Lance, it was a familiar feeling. “You could always contact your agents and take as much money as you want.”

Lance waved his hand. “Nevermind, we’ve already paid off that loan. The harvest was good.”

...Personally, Keith thought that “The Pink Book of Joy” was a very stupid title. But the readers from the numerous galaxies didn’t share his opinion. Also, the idea that pink was the color of bereavement on Altea, and that, by choosing it, The Pink Paladin had foretold her tragic fate, somehow boosted its popularity.

Quite ironic, that. Keith was absolutely sure Lance went for the opposite effect. His book had almost no tragic notes and contained absolutely no discussion of heroic destiny and sacrifice whatsoever. But, well… the readers are free to interpret, after all.

Besides, Keith didn’t think that “The Pink Book” was well written. He liked to read when he had time (which was not often), he appreciated carefully put together words, and he could tell with all honesty that Lance was not a good writer. He was too fond of complicated metaphors, but his overall phrasing was too simple, sometimes on the brink of banality or on the wrong side of cheesiness. His sentences were either cut too short or too lengthy to safely digest, and he hardly cared about rhythm.

Despite all that, Keith teared up when he finished the book for the first time.

Apparently, he was not alone in that. In the first galactic day after the start of the promotional campaign the number of sold copies jumped into zillions.

As for Keith, it took him almost two years to realize what the book was all about, take it to heart and come find Lance.

“I wish you’d call first,” said Lance when they were walking towards the house. “You’re lucky Pidge did, because I was tossing manure. I barely had time to change my clothes.”

Keith inhaled suspiciously, but Lance didn’t smell of anything offensive.

He laughed and slapped Keith’s back. “I’m kidding! It’s just, if we had a fair warning, mom would make her empanadas. You know how she adores you.”

Keith had no idea she did. Well, as he suspected after reading Lance’s book, there were plenty of things he had no idea about.

***

“The Pink Book of Joy” was launched to the broader audience from the biggest book selling portal on Earth, but only a handful of people knew its fate was not sealed from the beginning. It may have very well missed its readers.

The fate of the book was in the hands of the senior moderator A. G. Chong, and she cheerfully expelled it from the promotion queue, after barely looking through several pages. Her job was to accept or deny promotion for hundreds of works daily, most of them hardly worth her time — or anyone’s time at all, really. She had her own system going, and she rarely made mistakes.

All in all, A. G. would most likely forget the book ever existed, if not for its overzealous author.

She was trying to catch a bite in her allocated time slot, having won a brief but ruthless war for a corner table in a small cafe, overcrowded by aliens. Suddenly she noticed a guy who hesitated by the entrance, craning his neck as if in search for someone. He was the only human in that hole except her, and he defied the reason A. G. went to “Gr-Tchivok’s” at all — namely that you could hardly meet any humans there. 

So, she noticed the guy. She also noticed he was incredibly handsome, tall, broad shouldered, just the way she liked them. Unfortunately, when he squeezed himself through the crowd and got closer, A. G. was forced to sigh in disappointment: the guy had altean markings on his cheekbones, blue, the color of his eyes.

It was the peak of fashion lately: everyone was painting their faces this and that, often making use of alien skin patterns. A. G. would also do something like that if she had time. But Altean markings were something all the fashion influencers condemned as incredibly tacky. It was the equivalent of fully encasing oneself in leopard print. She wouldn’t steep so low as to flirt with a guy who lacked a sense of style to that extent, thank you very much!

But, blast, he came right up to her hard-won table.

“I’m sorry, are you Ay-Jee Chong, the senior moderator of ‘Not the news’?” He asked almost shyly.

It was probably her co-worker, one of the assistant moderators coming for advice after not having found her in the messengers (if that’s the case she was going to chew him out). Or, possibly, their market research agent sent someone cute to apologize for yesterday’s fuck up in person. Which would be quite nice, if not for her having lunch right now, for god’s sake!

“If you found me, then yeah, it’s me,” she sighed testily. “What can I do for you?” (She didn’t add “to make you suffer”, but it was evident from her tone).

“You unqueued my book from the main promotional sequence,” said the guy. “Could you tell me why? Don’t skip on the details. I really need to know, to make it better.”

A. G. felt a surge of panic. She encountered a fare share of psycho authors over the years, and this one found her in person! She needed to get out of there.

“How did you find me?” she tried to bide for time.

“Your receptionist told me where you are.”

“Our receptionist? The bi-boh-bee?!”

They gave this job to a bi-boh-bee specifically because no visitor had yet to understand what it was saying. Who needs visitors at all in our age of electronic communication? Let them text or call, at the very least!

“Yeah,” the guy nodded. “Please don’t yell at him, if he shouldn’t have told me these things, I asked him very nicely. You see, mine is kind of a special case.”

A. G. shook her head to settle new information. That was the first time someone — reportedly — got anything useful at all from a bi-boh-bee. How nicely did he need to ask?

“Everybody’s case is special,” she muttered. “I’m sorry, what’s your name? No, tell me, what book did you write? I won’t remember a name anyway.”

“The Pink Book of Joy”, said the guy readily, seemingly not offended by her rudeness. “That’s the one about the recent war and Princess Allura.”

Ah! Yes, she remembered it. If only because, despite the rawness of the style and lots of mistakes, the pages she looked through shone with true sincerity and… what should she call it..? ...something in between a vast life experience and naivete that never survives it? A. G. decided the author must be a middle aged vet with a lot of baggage, but not a lot in the head department — people like that often keep many childish traits even later in life. Maybe, she thought, he didn’t hide in the catacombs all four years of occupation, maybe he really was mixed up somehow with the Paladins and the Princess, for example, maybe he was among low-level Garrison personnel or even served on Atlas.

Besides, she really liked some paragraphs, they resonated with her own experience. For instance, the part where he wrote that in the dark the most important thing is a hand that holds yours. During the occupation, she and her mother were once buried underneath a fallen building together, and they were sure it was the end, until a Resistance rescue unit reached them through underground tunnels...

A. G. took pity on the unknown middle-aged vet, and didn’t send an automatic reply, but wrote a personal letter instead. She thought it was OK: the system didn’t permit any responses to the moderators anyway.

Apparently, it was a mistake. Now this dude decided she took an interest in his pathetic little book and came to stalk her! A young vet instead of an old one; someone to be scared of, perhaps?

Actually, come to think of it, his age was something that made the least sense. A. G. was rarely wrong in such matters, and she didn’t expect someone in his late twenties or early thirties. Well, live and learn.

“You know what,” said A. G. “The book is not bad overall. But it has no market potential as it is. Why don’t you start the promotion from one of our affiliated communities for aspiring authors? That’s a very good first step. You will hear solid advice and will be able to start your own followers’ base…”

The guy shook his head and said apologetically, “I thought about it. But it seems too complicated, and I don’t really have time to start small. You see, I need this book to become popular as fast as I can! I already waited for too long. The more time goes on, the less people care.”

A. G. sighed and did her best not to laugh in his face. Oh boy, grant her patience. At least, the guy didn’t seem aggressive. Maybe it wouldn’t be a complete waste of time to try to reason with him. “If you expect big royalties…” she began.

“No-no!” He even waved his hands. “I’m not interested in money. It’s just… you have decent auto-translation embedded, and you have an alien readership from this whole sector of the Big Cluster… I want to get this story out as wide as possible. She deserves it.”

She? Allura, apparently. Huh, so he was delusional after all.

“Then add sex, the more the better,” she said, looking straight into his honest blue eyes. “With a title like that people would expect it anyway. Princess Allura porn is trending right now.” 

His eyes flared up. It was not a figure of speech — they really started to glow, as if tiny blue flames appeared in the center of the irises. The markings on his cheeks seemed brighter all of a sudden, as if backlit too, his mouth pressed into thin line.

He hit the table with both palms and stood up abruptly, getting ready to leave.

“Please, wait!” A. G. breathed out, the situation rearranging itself in her head. “I’m sorry, I’m terribly sorry for what I said, I just wanted to get rid of you! You are a real Altean, right? Or a half-blood? I didn’t want to disrespect your princess!”

He couldn’t be a real Altean, could he? The ears didn’t matter that much, Alteans do have them in different shapes; perhaps there are some with round human-like ones. But the eyes didn’t match. Alteans have little colored circles in their irises, but this person had only normal human pupils, now blown wide with anger. And he was too old for a half-blood… was he? If the Black Paladin was born to a galra mother long before first contact, maybe...

He raised an eyebrow. “No, I’m not Altean. And not a half-blood either. What of it? A book by an Altean would be more marketable?” he sounded bitter. “I used my real name for your portal, actually.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember!”

The truth was A. G. rarely took notice of author’s names, especially because many authors chose unsavoury or downright silly handles.

“I’m Lance, the ex pilot of the Red Lion,” said the guy.

Only at that moment A. G. recognized him. Yeah, she saw him on one poster… nah, she actually saw him on many photos, but he was always wearing his helmet. Except for one where he looked much younger, smiled a stupid fake smile, and didn’t have any blue markings.

He was real! Oh wow, a real paladin wrote something that amounted to memoirs (even if most of the book was in third person), but didn’t find himself an agent, didn’t go to the Garrison’s press-center, didn’t even try to promote his book through the propaganda portal of the Galaxy Coalition with their enormous outreach! No, he came to them, to their small provincial “Not the news” portal! And she almost sent him back deeply offended!

Oh my god, if Chief finds out, A. G. may as well do some extensive plastic surgery to pose as a galra and emigrate on the Taujeeran moon!

“But this makes all the difference!” A. G. stood up and leaned towards him, pressing her sweaty palms on the table top. “This changes everything!”

“But you said that the book was bad?” the glow of his markings seemed less intense now.

“I didn’t say it was bad,” if only out of habit and the remnants of professional ethics, but he didn’t need to know that. “I said it lacked market potential! But with your name on the cover… no, your name is not that famous anyway… with the big letters ‘The Pink Book of Joy. Memoirs of the Red Paladin’... we’ll be so flooded by readers that our servers will collapse!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know online publishing doesn't work this way at all and is unlikely to work this way even in the future. It's just a bit of wishful thinking: how nice it would be, if a portal promoted new books that are worth it, or to have a person beside yourself to pin the blame onto when your book doesn't sell well! :D
> 
> (Yeah, I have an original being sold on an online portal, the first one is free, the second book you need to pay for. If you read in Russian and like detective stories in fantasy/sci-fi settings, you can go [check it out](https://author.today/work/43869) ).


	3. Chapter 3

Lance was showing off the farm with an air of sincere pride that seemed almost puzzling to Keith, who would never imagine anyone so excited about a hay mower, a milk sterilizer or a smokehouse.

“We sell smoked chicken, it’s good money, especially in the fall,” Lance narrated. “We also raise pigs for sale, but our main income is, of course, crop farming. See this column? That’s how we grow strawberries, to make the most use out of solar energy. We have fresh strawberries all year round! In the winter, we roll it into this barn, under heating lamps… They have nasty winters here, let me tell you, which is nothing like Cuba, but that’s alright. Mom says, she always wanted to live in a country where there is snow in the winter…”

The barn stood taller than the house and looked more like a hangar. It even had a motorized sliding door.

Having followed his gaze, Lance said, “Yeah, this place used to be a small military airfield. It belonged to the Garrison, by the way. We were given the land to rent for free for ninety nine years, as part of the rehabilitation program. We cleared the wreckage and built the house out of what we could salvage. It came out really nice, and sturdy too! Well, we can tour the house later…”

The enormous barn was a labyrinth of neatly stacked building supplies, which made making your way around within not a trivial task. There were also agricultural tools and machines, unknown to Keith, hanging and sitting along the walls. Keith caught himself thinking that it’s the perfect set up for a killer or a kidnapper to hide in, and had to consciously stop himself from planning countermeasures. Damn it. He had been out of active duty for about eight years now, not counting the instances where he had to deliver humanitarian aid under fire. And still the habit prevailed.

“Hey, I need a bathroom,” he cut Lance’s explanations short. “Where is it, in the house?”

“No, there is one closer, on the grounds. The farm is too big to jog back to the house every time you need to go. The john is straight out the door and to the right. I’ll wait for you and clean this mess up a bit.”

As far as Keith could see, there was nothing amiss in the barn, with everything sorted in perfect order. But Lance honed in on something and began to reshuffle some tools, whistling cheerfully.

Keith went outside; as he left the dimly lit barn, the glare of the sun almost hit him, together with the smells of warm earth and grass. It was too hot, the air lazy and sleepy. In such weather he’d prefer to lie down on a chaise and do nothing… He wondered if there were chaises on the farm.

After turning right, Keith found himself in another labyrinth of construction materials, now out in the open, partially covered by torn tarpaulin or thick industrial film, but the smell of timber soon changed to that of excrement. Keith carefully looked around the corner of a tower of wooden planks, and grimaced. It was an honest to god compost pit. Was he supposed to do his business right there? It wasn't even an outhouse! Just a hole in the ground! 

Well, sometimes during the missions he had to dive into more unpleasant places headfirst. But those were missions. Maybe he could just pee against the wall of the barn, it’ll dry up quickly in the heat… No, it would be very bad manners. A compost pit would have to do. Keith only hoped he wouldn't slide on the edge and fall down...

When Keith returned to the entrance, he heard voices coming from inside the barn. He froze behind a pile of roof tiles near the gates, more out of sheer habit than having a genuine bad feeling.

A girl was speaking, probably one of Lance’s nieces. Maybe Nadia, maybe another one, who was born after the war. Keith hadn’t yet met her. No, judging from her age, it was Nadia.

“It’s so awful, like my insides are twisting around, you can’t imagine!” The adolescent girl was whining. “Mom says, just take some ibuprofen and go pull weeds on the pumpkin patch, she is heartless!”

“Have you seen a doctor?” asked Lance with some concern.

“Yeah, mom took me last month, the doc said it was OK, nothing unusual, just normal menstrual pains… Fu-udge, I’m so pissed with it! We have interstellar starships now, and still no working painkillers!”

“Cramps are pretty much just muscular spasms, they are very hard to soothe,” Lance sighed sympathetically. 

Keith had to shake his head, thinking he misheard something. When did Lance became so well versed in female physiology?! He once stumbled upon Pidge’s pads in the common showers and turned red as a tomato!

“It’s awful!” Nadia moaned again. “I don’t want to grow up anymore!”

“Thank god, you haven’t grown up yet,” Lance chuckled. “Let me kiss your head to make it better!”

“That only works for babies! And only when it’s mom who kisses!”

“Look at this pipsqueak, she doesn’t believe in my familiar magic! How dare you!”

Keith heard the sounds of a mock fight, then an exaggerated smooching sound.

“Is it better now?”

“Huh! Actually, it kinda is!”

“That’s because active movement helps with the spasm,” Lance said in a teacher’s voice. “Your mom is right, go weed the pumpkins.”

“Darn!”

“I’ll come help you as soon I show Keith around.”

“That could be ages! I know how you are with your friends!”

“Well, tough luck, that.”

Keith stayed in his hideout, not wanting to embarrass the girl: if she saw him, she’d realize he heard everything. Nadia walked by, dragging her feet unhappily. Keith inhaled: indeed, she had her menstruation, women always smelled a bit different during this time of their cycle. But she didn’t smell like she was in pain. She must really be better.

Immediately, he heard a melodic ring of a personal comm behind the barn’s door. If not for his hearing, slightly better than that of an average human, Keith wouldn’t hear it. It got cut off almost immediately.

“Yes, doctor?” Lance asked.

He sounded worried.

That should have been Keith’s cue to circle the roof-tiles and walk through the door, as any polite person would. Maybe clear his throat a little, to make sure Lance was aware of his presence. But Keith never considered himself to be polite company. And something in Lance’s tone of voice raised metaphorical fur on his scruff.

If someone answers the telephone with “yes, doctor” in such a manner, it’s always bad news. When Shiro was ill, Keith heard him speaking to his doctors a couple of times. Those were far from his best memories.

“Damn,” Lance swore, replying to what was said on the other end of the line. “Are you sure there are no more doses? What if we called… Yes. Yes. I understand. It’s OK. It’s nothing. You did everything you could. I’m already on my way.”

A sound of a closed connection followed.

Keith abandoned his hiding spot without thinking. Lance was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he nearly collided with Keith at the barn entrance. If not for Keith’s battle-honed reflexes, they’d both have a bloody nose.

“Oh, Keith, did you find it?” Lance looked at Keith absentmindedly and ruffled his own hair for some reason. “It dawned on me, I probably didn’t explain it right, there is an outhouse behind the compost pit…”

“Yeah,” Keith lied. “I heard you on the phone. What happened? Is someone sick? Can I help?”

Lance smiled briefly. “Yes, someone is sick, but it’s not your business... Uhm, well, that sounded wrong,” he rubbed his chin. “It’s not one of my relatives, I don’t know him, we’ve never even met. He’s just a patient in a local hospital. Doctor Georgeievic can’t help him anymore. No one else can either. I sometimes visit people in those situations.”

Keith thought he understood. “Psychological support?”

To hold a hand of a dying person? Quiznack. How could Lance endure it? No wonder he got so distracted all of a sudden.

“N-no, not really,” Lance took a stuttering breath, as if gathering his resolve. “OK, it’s easier to show you. Will you ride with me?”

Lance looked so down and lost inside his own head right now, that Keith would go with him anywhere without asking for a word of explanation. So he simply nodded.

***

Keith didn’t expect them to go immediately. Even in the case of a terminally ill patient, he reasoned, it was unlikely he had only hours to live. But Lance hurried as if they were going on a battle mission. He didn’t change his clothes, just took a crumpled to-go bag from the house and went straight to the garage. Keith didn’t ask if it was OK to bring Cosmo with him: a hospital is no place for a space beast, even the most well behaved. So he called Cosmo to heel, said that he was going away with Lance for several hours and told him to behave while he was gone.

Considering that Cosmo appeared before Keith chewing something, with drops of raw hamburger clinging to his snout, Keith strongly suspected that in his absence Lance’s family would spoil the liar rotten. He acted like he hadn’t been fed for a year! 

Near the garage Lance shouted to a woman fussing over a flower bed (the flowers were, surprisingly, not juniberries). “Mom, me and Keith are going to take the hover to town!”

Lance’s mother Lidia turned around and gave her son and Keith a worried look. Keith hadn’t had the chance to really speak to her since his arrival; he only managed a quick hello when he left his bag at the house, before Lance took it upon himself to show him the grounds.

“To the town or the hospital?” She asked in a hushed tone for some reason.

Lance glanced over his shoulder as if checking that the coast was clear, before answering, “To the hospital.”

Lidia sighed and, surprisingly, blessed her son with a sign of a cross. “God be with you, baby.”

Her face remained tense and worried.

Keith added it to the collection of puzzles that surrounded Lance in his head now, the first one being why Lance never told him directly… But no, that was going to wait for the evening.

The garage contained a bright red sparkling hovercar, probably a new one. Keith wasn’t well versed in the hovercars’ makes and models — he hadn’t even checked out hoverbikes in over fourteen years (twelve years for the non space-whale faring world)! But this one surely looked like a sleek expensive toy.

“The harvest was that good?” Keith raised his eyebrows.

Lance chuckled. “No, it’s an older model, from before the invasion. There used to be a car factory nearby. Galra bombed it to dust, but didn’t touch the storehouse for some reason. Now all the locals are cruising around in luxury cars, although most of them don’t look half that new anymore. But we’re Cubans, you know. Taking care of old cars is a matter of pride. Pa and Luis are especially happy to tinker with ours.”

On the inside, the car had a feel of being long and lovingly used. There were small woven rugs made of colourful strips of fabrics on the seats, some of them looking pretty old. On the front panel an assortment of dog figurines were nodding their little heads. There was a rolled up blanket and a pillow lying on the back seat, Lance put his bag on top of it.

Lance drove out of the garage with extreme skill and care, Keith didn’t expect he could pilot a car with such precision. But behind the farm gates, when the hovercar lifted itself above the tramped country road, Lance half sang half yelled, “Let’s boogie!” And ‘boogie’ they did.

Keith was pressed into his seat, his vision went dark for a second, and he had a fleeting thought — oh, that’s why Lidia blessed her son! She probably didn’t care enough for Keith to cross _him_. 

Lance cackled like crazy.

“You’re still the worst pilot in the world!” Keith shouted. How the fuck was this car still in one piece?!

The hover was descending the serpentine mountain road with the fury of a speed racer. Keith was violently reminded of his first flight in the Blue lion. However, when they reached a wider and better road — the previous one could be called a road only out of pity — Lance suddenly calmed down, and the hover glided smoothly.

“I love this climb so much!” he sighed happily.

“I thought you didn’t miss battle flying,” was the only thing Keith could say after the trembling exhale. 

“I don’t, not really. After Red and Blue, piloting another ship would be like cheating, you know?”

Keith did know. Probably. He wouldn’t understand that before, when space was everything to him and he was ready to do almost anything to get there. But something in Lance’s words rubbed him the wrong way.

“It’s not cheating, if they flew away.”

“That’s true,” Lance was smiling. “They went someplace — or some time, maybe — where they were needed more. Relax, it’s not like I’m holding out for something that is never coming back,” he winked at Keith. “It’s just that after you are used to the coffee out of jezve, instant one doesn’t taste so good, kapish?”

Keith gulped. Could it be that he read this part of the Pink Book wrong? “I get it,” he turned to a side window that was now looking at the picturesque mountain valley to the right.

“Well, it’s like that. I don’t miss flying, but I do miss the speed sometimes, and the adrenalin,” Lance confessed. “But I can’t get crazy in traffic, can I. So I learned this little trail by heart, I could maybe drive the hover down with my eyes closed. Oh, that’s an idea for the next time!” 

“Count me out,” Keith grumbled.

Lance laughed. “Our fearless leader is scared! Ok, sorry, I’m going to be a perfect guide from now on. Look at this town by the river. Surprisingly, it wasn’t damaged at all during Sendak’s invasion! The fleet checked it with its scanners, didn’t find any biosignatures and thought it was some kind of low-importance agricultural structures, so they decided not to waste ion beams on it, just burnt down the car factory.”

“Where were the people?”

“In the caves. There are lots of caves in these mountains. The locals are genetically programmed that way. In case of an invasion, keep calm, hide in the caves and start a guerilla movement… Well, they couldn’t do the last thing this time, because Galra never actually occupied this place. If you don’t count ‘liberating’ hovercars from a storehouse as a guerilla action, which of course they do. Otherwise it would be stealing, not something you can brag about!”

Keith was honestly surprised. “No casualties at all?”

He used to think that only those Earth settlements with little to no infrastructure were spared — traditional communities, or incredibly remote hamlets, like little villages in Alaskan forests or Siberian taiga.

“Some, but not many,” Lance smiled. “Isn’t it a happy place to live..? But if you think there are only long-timers here, you’re wrong. After the war many people moved to destroyed major cities to help with the restoration efforts, or just in search of something exciting to do — you know, with all these aliens and interstellar travel. And many vets and civilian survivors, on the contrary, came here. Those who didn’t want to see graves wherever they look,” he didn’t add ‘like us,’ but Keith almost heard it anyway. “There are quite a lot of off-worlders here, mostly refugees from ruined planets. A whole enclave of Olkari, for example.”

Having said that, Lance got silent again, as if his mind tripped on something unpleasant. Keith didn’t insist on him elaborating. Maybe Lance still blamed himself for the fate of Olkarion. Pidge sure did, despite Keith being the only one who could possibly be blamed for that. If he realized the futility of searching for Haggar’s robots sooner, if he thought about asking Olkari for help earlier, they could have...

At last, the hovercar stopped near the hospital, whose modest size and cubic shape betrayed the fact that it was built about two centuries ago. Lance took a space in a personnel parking lot with no hesitation, then opened his ‘go’ bag. It contained a white coat that Lance shrugged on over his t-shirt.

“I don’t have a spare, so you’ll have to take this,” Lance pressed a badge with a cord into Keith’s hands.

It had a picture of Lance, with an extremely serious expression and glasses that didn’t suit him.

“That’s your ID!”

“Nobody’s gonna look! Let’s go.”

“Hey, wait a minute, you can’t just…”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Keith, it’s not a military base! Relax!”

The security measures in the hospitals did leave much to be desired: basically, somebody just hung a fake camera above the staff entrance, and decided it was enough. A middle-aged balding man with a grey beard met them near that door.

“Doc,” Lance shook his hand. “This is my friend, Keith. Keith, this is doctor Georgeivic.”

“Does he know?” the doctor looked at Keith tensely.

“Not yet, but I was going to tell him.”

“Can we trust him?”

“More than I trust myself,” Lance smiled softly, and Keith felt something trembling in his chest. “Ok, take me to the patient.”

The hospital halls were cool and strangely quiet. The patient’s room, on the contrary, was awash with sunlight streaming through a wide window. “The sun is bright, that’s good…” Lance murmured distractedly. The three of them stopped near the entrance, not quite looking in; evidently, Lance wanted to evaluate the room without being seen.

That allowed Keith to also look inside without revealing his presence.

A man lying on a hospital bed was tall and thin… he was also an Olkari. Instead of healthy greenish, his skin looked almost yellow. Judging by the wrinkles around his eyes, the guy was very old. His arms dried up so much that skin casings near his wrists looked like boxing mitts.

There was a woman sitting beside the bed, holding one of these dried up hands in hers.

She was probably around forty. A little overweight, glasses, worn-out red hair-dye, she was looking at the off-worlder and smiling. Keith knew this kind of smile very well; he saw it on Lance’s face many times.

Looking at the scene, Lance inhaled and exhaled sharply. “Ok, I’m going in,” he said. “Do you have the props?”

From a cart near the door Doctor Georgievic took a small measuring cup full of poisonous looking bright green liquid.

Having caught Keith’s curious glance, he explained, “It’s just water with food coloring.”

Lance took the cup with one hand, then removed the stethoscope from the doctor’s neck with his other hand — the doctor didn’t protest — and hung it around his own neck. Then he went into the room.

“Good afternoon,” Lance’s voice sounded friendly, but surprisingly devoid of artificial cheerfulness. “It’s time for your general tonic.”

“We don’t have any tonic prescribed,” the look that woman gave Lance was almost hostile. 

“Doctor Georgeivic wants to try something,” Lance shrugged. “Don’t worry, it’s safe.”

“You know what, we tried enough snake oils!” the woman’s face flared up.

But the olkari on the bed said softly; it was not even a whisper, more of a rasp. “Let it be, Denise. The color is… so beautiful. I’ll take it.”

“Just a second!” Lance put the cup on the bedside table and pushed a button on the bed’s framework.

The back of the bed slowly lifted, allowing the patient to sit up. After that Lance helped the olkari drink, supporting his shoulders with the utmost care.

“Who is he? What is his illness?” Keith whispered. “What’s Lance playing at?”

“His name is Nehvar, son of Lomorr,” said Georgeivic. “He is suffering from an inherited condition called relinodekiat deficiency. Relinodekiat is a ferment that olkari bodies normally produce. Its deficit is a relatively common issue, which was usually not life-threatening on Olkarion. They just took the medicine in pills or shots. Unfortunately, the plant it was derived from was destroyed together with Olkarion.”

“And they didn’t pack the drugs when evacuating?”

“They did. They even packed the seeds of the trees they needed. But when they were planted on other planets, the sprouts didn’t produce the necessary chemicals. Even olkari with all their ingenuity couldn’t do anything about it. As they write in their articles,” doctor Georgeivic resettled his glasses, “you can’t make nature produce what it doesn’t have. My goodness, if we were allowed to write research papers like that when I was young, I’d be a professor already!” he shook his head in frustration.

“Are there no synthetics?” Once the Olkari polished off his placebo, Lance carefully wiped his chin with a napkin. Did Keith imagine it, or Lance’s hands were glowing softly? The former, probably, since Lance was partly backlit by the sunlight.   
“There are, but they are not fit for everybody. Nehvar, for example, has an allergy. He had a small stack of natural medicine with him, but a month ago it ran out, and we couldn’t find any more. We tried synthetics combined with antihistamines, but… as you can see, it didn’t take.”

Keith expected that Lance would keep them company a little longer, maybe talk to the patient, say several words to his future widow.

Instead, he said his polite, but brief goodbyes and left the room, his gait energetic and business-like.

Past the doors he abruptly turned left… And almost fell on Keith’s hands. His knees seemed to buckle, he even moaned quietly. Keith, who didn’t expect it, almost dropped him.

“Come on, I’ll help you, but we need to be very, very quiet,” doctor Georgeivic hurried over to help carry Lance by picking up his legs. “Oh my, it seems especially bad this time… Did he heal someone else today, do you know?”

“What’s going on with him?!” Keith would growl at the doctor if not for a dying patient behind the wall.

“Nothing special, just an acute exhaustion. You look like you do some sports, have you ever tried to pick up your usual regimen after being sick or recovering from a trauma and suddenly almost faint? That’s just the thing. Now we’ll give him some glucose… and will nudge his blood pressure up, too.”

Together they carried Lance into an empty room down the hall, and placed him on a bed. There was an IV stand prepared, and doctor Georgeievic started to insert a catheter into Lance’s vein — not very deftly, as Keith noticed. He probably was out of practice and relied on his nurses too much.

Keith took the syringe and catheter from his hands and did everything himself. The doctor just needed to attach the IV.

Lance’s skin looked greyish, he breathed heavily, like after a desperate run or a fight, his eyelashes were trembling on his cheeks. But he was conscious.

Keith tightened his fists to avoid doing something rash that he would regret later. But still, he couldn’t resist his sharp, accusing tone. “Does he give away his life energy?! And you, a doctor, allow this?!”

“Keith, stop worrying,” Lance mumbled thickly. “It’s not that dramatic. I’m just… whatchacallit… a conduit. Like Allura was before. I take energy… from the universe. But I didn’t study on Oriande, so it’s kind of hard... “

Only then Keith noticed that the blue markings on Lance’s cheeks were still faintly glowing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In "Nehvar", "h" is silent (I added it to avoid an open syllable). Lomorr is pretty much sounds as it's spelled, in both names the stresses are on the second syllable.  
> Georgeivic is pronounced as "George"+"vich", it's a standard Serbian surname :)


	4. Chapter 4

Keith commandeered the driver’s seat for the trip back, despite Lance’s insistence that he felt OK now and that the three burgers he had gobbled down were absolutely enough to restore his strength. Keith would’ve even believed him, if after every word Lance hadn’t tossed a french fry from a huge bag into his mouth.

He took the back seat instead of shotgun, saying he didn’t want to distract Keith on an unfamiliar road with his chewing. But Keith suspected that the actual reason was that Lance wanted to sprawl all over the seat.

That was a worrying sign. Keith never remembered him being so out of energy, except maybe when seriously wounded.

Keith counted himself a good driver — or a pilot, that amounted to the same thing. At least nobody ever complained, except maybe the enemy. But the local country roads were something else! The last time they were fixed must have been at least ten years before the invasion.

A hovercar is no hoverbike, its bottom collides with all the bumps on the road. For a comfortable ride, the surface should be at least marginally smooth. Keith realized he got too dependent on space in the recent years, where one encountered turbulence only near a black hole’s event horizon.

“So, you’re trying to follow in Allura’s footsteps??” Keith asked, glancing at Lance through the rearview mirror.

Lance was licking his fingers at the moment, and Keith had to hurriedly turn his eyes back to the road, hoping Lance would not see his sudden blush.

Lance giggled. “Not exactly. It happened by accident, really.”

“How did you manage to accidentally learn how to heal?”

“Well, first I healed myself. Or, more like, I noticed I wasn’t sick anymore. It’s… kind of difficult to explain…”

“You were depressed,” Keith nodded, not letting his eyes off the road.

“No shit!” Lance sat up straighter. “How do you know that?”

Keith shrugged, already regretting his words. It would be awkward to admit that in his travel bag there was a pad with “The Pink Book” loaded on it, doubled in size because of notes and hyperlinks, including pictures.

“I kinda guessed,” he muttered. “You were diagnosed on Earth, after the battle with Sendak, right?”

Lance sighed and leaned back again. “Well, not exactly, I was diagnosed with PTSD exacerbated by depression. The Garrison shrink assured me I had it easy compared to most of the young vets. That was his idea of encouragement.”

“I take it, you were not encouraged?”

Lance chuckled. “It didn’t seem easy from the inside, like at all… I mean, I wasn’t standing on a roof edge, and I wasn’t attacking galran cruisers head on, like some people I know…”

“That was a tactical necessity!”

“Yeah, I won’t argue with that. Dude, I was in the same place as you,” more loud chewing. “I get it. We were all ready, if need be. Head on into a hopeless battle. What I’m trying to say is… I was prescribed some happy pills, and they helped. And Allura was an even bigger help. When I was with her, I was always happy.”

The hovercar jumped on a bump Keith missed. Quiznack, how did Lance manage to avoid them all?

“And then, after she was gone… I wanted to go to Earth as soon as possible, but had to spend several months helping you all sort out that mess, Hunk and Shiro had too much on their plates as it was… And while we were at it, I somehow lost my pills, but I didn’t really care. Like, I was beyond caring, I kinda thought, I just had to endure it, that it was fair if I felt bad all the time… Please don’t lecture me on toxic thinking, I know that!” Lance added hurriedly. “I knew it was wrong even then, thinking like that, but couldn’t help it. Like I felt that I needed to be suffering. But then I noticed I wasn’t anymore. Not really. I didn’t feel great, sure, and I missed her like crazy. But there was no despair. Things mattered again. And this feeling, that nothing is ever going to be OK, disappeared, too. I knew I was going to get better, that after some time I’ll be able to appreciate being alive again. And that I just needed to wait a bit till that time comes, you know?”

Keith nodded. He got it… in theory. He experienced the stages of grief differently, with a very brief depression followed by a stubborn denial, where he did everything in his power to either fix whatever happened, or to make sure it would never happen again, if at all possible. But Lance learnt how to explain things better than in their adventurous youth; Keith could imagine his feelings.

“I also knew my grief was very self-centered,” Lance chuckled again. “What was I so unhappy about? That I won’t get to see her for another eighty years? We will all be together again anyway, in the end.”

Keith’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. He knew that Lance was religious, he read it between the lines of his book, but never before had Lance touched on his beliefs. Personally, Keith never believed in an afterlife, not counting that twisted version that the original paladins got, being locked for a millenia in Honerva’s mind.

But he wasn’t going to argue with Lance on something that brought him peace. “So, how did you realize you had healing powers?”

“Well, I read a lot about depression, and I found out that it literally alters the brain both chemically and organically, that’s why willpower alone was never enough to heal a person. And a strong emotional surge wasn’t going to cut it either — such things usually just make it worse. So, I realized that something else happened to me. And what could have happened? Only these markings,” Lance probably touched his cheek, Keith couldn’t see it from his front seat. “So I started looking for more info, thinking maybe that’s because I became an Altean, and that maybe Alteans don’t have depression. But they do! Same as us, often much stronger, they have sturdier mental health, but when it deteriorates, boy, does it go down bad! So, it wasn’t that. And then I noticed that Allura’s wilted flower that I kept in my room revived! All by itself! And that’s how I knew.”

“But your powers are much weaker than hers?”

“Yeah, no comparison. Allura once brought me back from the dead…”

“Allura what?!” The car swerved until Keith got a hold of himself.

Lance laughed. “Don’t worry, it was nothing too bad. I was clinically dead for just a couple of minutes, no biggie. Even our reanimators could work with that. I don’t even remember anything. Anyhow, I can’t revive anyone. I checked. Our cat, Chiquita, has died. We loved her so much, she was awesome. She survived during the invasion, was hiding underground together with the fam, she caught mice and brought them to mom, to make soup for everybody. Or that’s how mom tells the story anyway. So, I tried to revive her for so long like you wouldn’t believe! About ten minutes, I think. Then I stopped. I kind of got scared I’d succeed, and it would be a twenty-third century ‘Pets’ Cemetery’ reenactment!”

Keith shook his head. The flood of information refused to settle in his head. Why did he think that after analysing Lance memoirs he got to know him better? Especially since he didn’t get to know the real Lance even after three whole years as teammates.

“If you can’t revive anything, what about the flower?”

“I read later that in plants living cells stay alive longer. The whole tree could be dried up, but there would be some living tissues inside. And juniberries are very persistent, they spend winters under snow on Altea. Oh, look, I finished the fries! I thought they were never gonna end.”

Keith suppressed the urge to growl. Again. “OK. So you’re treating hopeless cases that the local doctor sends your way, is that it? In secret?”

“I know, I know, I should have come out about it,” Lance said apologetically. “But I don’t really control this thing so well. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And it’s not good for some diseases. That’s why I never introduce myself to patients, don’t like giving them false hope. Doc usually explains it off afterwards with a spontaneous remission, or an experimental drug, that’s effective only in ten percent of cases, or that they were misdiagnosed — that’s generally in case the patient was transferred from somewhere else, Doc doesn’t want to make his own hospital look bad. It’s usually not a problem, to cover his tracks, because most patients get transferred here from smaller local hospitals and clinics. And, you know, after each healing it takes me too long to restore my strength. If I let everybody know what I can do, they’ll probably form a queue for my services, like for transplanting organs, and every time I’ll heal somebody I won’t be able to help someone else, and I’ll have to choose, and…”

“Wait, wait!” Keith parked the hover at the roadside and turned to Lance. “Stop! I never said anything of the sort! There is no way you should come clean!”

“What?” Lance’s eyes grew wide.

“If you tell the authorities you have healing powers, you’ll be sent to heal balmeras. Do you know how many of them the Empire drove to the brink of death? And they take very long to heal, because none of the present Alteans have even a portion of Allura’s powers! Now every adult Altean is obligated to work on balmeras’ healing once a decaphoeb, because the Coalition needs a lot of energy to restore everything that was ruined. And the Galra, who are a part of the Coalition, also need energy. They’ve been living off quintessence for so long, it can’t be turned around in just ten decaphoebs. Those in charge won’t let you heal people at all!”

Besides, Lance was absolutely right, that burden was too much for him. But Keith would be damned if he told him that. Because Lance was the strongest person Keith ever met, apart from Shiro and Allura. But those two were in a league of their own.

Astonished, Lance leaned back onto the seat. “Quiznack! I never even thought of that.”

Keith couldn’t suppress his grin, Lance opened himself wide for it. “Thinking is not your strong suit.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Yeah, keep mocking poor weakened unhappy me!”

“Your wish is my command.”

Lance moaned exaggeratedly.

Keith realized something else. “So, your healing powers end up being used on patients that wouldn’t know much about their own condition?”

“More or less,” Lance nodded. “By the way, it’s not always terminal cases. Sometimes treatment is very long and painful, and I try to help there too, especially with kids. Most times, people are so happy to be OK again, that they don't bother to dig too deep on what cured them. Sometimes Doc makes up a story involving traditional medicine and local herbs. It has been working so far.”

“But this olkari… He has lived with his condition for many years. He was born with it. He knew exactly what it was.”

“Yes,” Lance nodded.

“And he knew it was untreatable. If he believes that Doctor Georgeivic created some kind of a magical potion out of local components…”

“He’ll bring here the whole scientific team of olkari to research it. Because it will save lives,” Lance finished. “Yeah, I know. I’ve thought about it. That’s why I’ve been hesitating for so long. As I said, I’m all about myself. I made him and his wife suffer for two extra weeks.”

“Was that his wife?” Keith asked, although he didn’t really doubt it.

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t he a bit old for her?”

“Actually, she is older, if I remember correctly. He looked that bad because of the illness. He is thirty two, I think. About our age.”

Keith kept quiet. He had nothing more to say on the matter, really. He looked around, suddenly noticing that he stopped the car in a very picturesque place. To the left, the hills were rolling like waves to the distant horizon where they turned into a proper mountain range, misty blue on the background of the brighter sky. To the right, a grey and rusty-red rocky wall was almost leaning onto the road. Despite the steep angle, stubborn pine trees were grabbing the almost vertical stones with gnarly roots, as if they didn’t get the memo that the trees were not supposed to grow where there is no soil. 

It was just this morning that Keith thought it was a good place, fit for Lance and his family. Now he suddenly saw it as a trap, with the mountains blocking the escape routes.

***

Wrung out by all the exhausting emotions and the family dinner, during which Keith was bullied into eating almost as much as he usually ate during the whole day, he fell asleep early. He wasn’t bothered by the heat that didn’t let up till the nightfall, nor by Cosmo, who collapsed on Keith’s legs like a sack, nor the unfamiliar bedroom. And he woke up before sunrise.

Keith was lying on his back, with Cosmo on his feet. It was very quiet, except for wind whispering in the tree canopies behind the window. The sky was greyish blue, the air pleasantly cool.

Despite the extremely early hour, Keith smelled something baking: fresh bread and also something sweeter, with vanilla overtones.

Keith mused, that was how peaceful life should feel like, the life that the other paladins weren’t able to hold on to. Neither him, nor Hunk, nor Pidge. Maybe Shiro..? Keith had yet to visit his place after the wedding.

That seemed counterintuitive. The two of them who lost most of all could start a new page, while the rest were still stuck with the aftermaths of war.

Suddenly, Keith felt a wave of bittersweetness. He was content for Lance’s sake, he really was. Even if Keith himself would never experience that peaceful life, with or without him, it didn’t matter as long as Lance was happy. So long as his happiness was true, not a brave front, as Keith had been afraid of for many years.

The bitterness was due to the fact that this peace might be short-lived.

No, Keith wasn’t really afraid that Lance would be forced to heal balmeras instead of people. If worse came to worst, they had a lot of connections, including Sam Holt, who would be happy to cover for Lance. The real reason for his worry was, if Lance’s abilities were made public, it could lead to a terrible scandal: the former Red Paladin, the author of a cult bestseller about the power of kindness, solidarity and forgiveness, refused to apply his gift to the common cause, helping random people he took a shine for instead! Because there sure would be people who interpreted the situation that way. Keith was used to the humanitarian aid from “Blades of Marmora” being misconstrued seven ways to Sunday, and Lance’s story seemed even murkier from the outside. And at that point, the peaceful life for Lance and his family would end.

No, it wouldn’t come down to a scandal, actually. Keith was sure Lance’s sense of duty would sooner force him to agree to leave Earth, to go where he would be needed — or told that he would be needed. Or he would allow others to chain him down (metaphorically, of course, but still) to healing the VIPs from the Coalition and their family members. He’d say, “they’re patients too,” and that would be that.

Keith clenched his fists above the blanket and swore he wouldn’t let it come to that. 

Cosmo sensed his tension, raised his head and whined.

***

Even though Keith didn’t need to fight anymore (at least, regularly), he still didn’t feel like himself without going through his morning routine — a warm up, then a short run. After warming up a little right in the bedroom, he looked at the satellite map and tried to figure out his new route. The sad excuse for a road that they used to get to the slightly better “highway” yesterday was shorter than Keith would like, but he would be climbing uphill on the way back, so it should work OK in the end. The combined workload would be enough.

He threw on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, called Cosmo, stepped into the hall… and froze in front of Lance’s half-opened door. Was it a good idea to ask Lance to join him? Had he slept enough?

Keith softly rapped his knuckles on the doorframe. Nobody answered.

For some reason, he remembered how he entered Lance’s quarters on Atlas right after Allura’s disappearance.

Almost without thinking, he swung the door open, afraid of seeing Lance’s shoulders trembling under the blanket.

But the bedroom was empty. There were three pictures on the nightstand, one of them was a family photo. Judging from the kids’ ages, it was taken about three or four years ago. Another one was Lance and Allura on their first date (Keith was well aware of the history of that one). The third one was very recent, from the Paladins’ last meet up on Allura's day. Keith immediately realized that Lance was changing this photo every year. He probably printed it out at the spaceport, because who would need a paper printer in the country... 

Keith kept all his pics in the pad. He was always on the move anyway, the less baggage he had, the better. Picture frames are big and clunky.

Another significant thing in the room was a juniberry flower in the oval pot. Could it be the same one..?

Yet Lance was trying to argue that he was not holding out for someone who wasn’t there… 

Keith felt his throat clamp up. The reason he came here was probably never going to work.

Nevermind. He still managed to arrive right on time, because Lance needed him to solve the problem he created by healing that olkari.

(Keith suddenly felt very glad that he documented his absence as a long-term research vacation and changed the comm number, with only Axca knowing the current one.)

Cosmo licked his lowered hand, offering his support. Keith sighed and petted his friend between the ears. It didn’t matter right now anyway. Lance must be already up. Keith read somewhere that workday on a farm starts before sunrise. Maybe, he should opt out of a jog, find Lance on the grounds and have a good talk with him instead?

But Keith found Lance much sooner than expected, he heard his voice when he was passing a door to the kitchen.

Lance was arguing with someone, trying to lower his voice, although not very successfully. He spoke Spanish, but not with a Mexican accent that Keith was used to, with a different one, so he caught only random words. Like “enfermeria”.

He was answered by a female voice, a calm one, with undertones of well-hidden frustration. Lidia.

Keith realized that eavesdropping won’t give him anything, unlike yesterday, he cleared his throat politely and walked into the kitchen.

On the big table in the middle of the room there was a large towel covered plate, smelling maddeningly good — like freshly baked bread. Lidia was sitting at the table, sipping coffee. At her elbow there was a small cezve sitting on an equally small portable electric stove. Keith recalled Lance’s words from yesterday with mixed feelings; he didn’t really get coffee, unless you could add a lot of milk, some cream and at least four spoonfuls of sugar.

Lance was standing at the big stove, his back to his mother, vigorously working on something sizzling with a wooden spatula. The long sleeves of his checkered shirt were rolled up, and his sharp tanned elbows were moving almost as if he were dancing. A kitchen hood was buzzing slightly above the oven, so Keith smelled the dish Lance was making only after stepping into the kitchen. It was an omelette, evidently, with tomatoes, sweet peppers, onions and some unknown spices. Yummy.

“Ah, good morning, my dear!” Lidia exclaimed kindly, switching into English without a hitch or a hint of an accent. No one from Lance’s family had an accent, actually. “Did you sleep well?”

“Very,” Keith said truthfully.

“Keith!” Lance turned to him and beamed, although Keith could tell he had been frowning. Keith felt warm inside. “Are you hungry?” 

Usually, Keith didn’t eat before his morning jog, but this time his stomach rumbled as if on cue. Lance chuckled, moved the big cast-iron pan aside on the stove, took a plate from the shelf and deftly loaded it with the omelette.

“Eat up,” he put the plate on the table. “Do you want some milk to go with it, you overgrown kitty?”

Keith rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Galra are not cats, Lance.”

Not deigning this with an answer, Lance opened the fridge, took a plastic jug out of it and waggled his eyebrows. “Kaltenecker is still milking, by the way.”

“OK, give me some,” Keith admitting his defeat, sitting down at the table. “But you were making this breakfast for yourself.”

“He deserves to make another one,” Lidia snorted. “Although for a real punishment I should make him cook breakfast for the whole family.”

“Mom,” Lance poured slightly yellowish milk that immediately left a thin film on the walls of the tall glass he put before Keith, and returned to the stove. “Don’t start this again. You know I had to…”

“Sure, but was it necessary to heal Nadia before that?” Lidia asked. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice how she stopped complaining? You knew you might have to go to the hospital, but did it anyway. She would have been perfectly alright without it.”

“Do you see this cold-hearted woman, Keith?” Lance sighed. “She wants her own granddaughter to suffer!”

Keith couldn’t answer, because he had a mouthful of omelette — a divine taste, by the way.

“Nobody dies of menstrual pains,” Lidia shrugged and took another sip of her coffee. “Besides, they last only about a day or two. I already talked to her mother, we are going to buy an electric wearable thingy to deal with the spasms. You could have asked me before solving all the problems with magic.”

Lance sighed. “It’s not magic, mom, I told you. And I’m not solving all the problems. I barely spent any healing on the short stack… just a smidge.”

“And if you had kept that smidge, then you wouldn't have nearly fainted,” Lidia nodded. “How typical. Just like your father.”

Keith couldn’t tell if she meant it as a compliment or as an insult.

“Does anybody else in the family know?” he asked, having managed to defeat the gravitational pull of the best breakfast he ever had.

“No one,” Lance said. “I’m a mama’s boy, what can you do. I could never hide something from the most important woman in my life,” he winked at his mother.

The second helping of the omelette was almost done, judging from the smell. Huh, Keith didn’t expect it so fast.

“He is pulling your leg,” Lidia said kindly. “He was never going to tell me anything, except I caught him when he healed Marco’s leg. Marco believed what Lance told him, that the saw only grazed him, even though Marco had seen enough blood to be scared by it and panicked that he had cut his leg off. But I hadn’t been a nurse for ten years for nothing,” she said proudly.

Lance sat opposite of Keith with another plate, reached under the towel and ripped a big hunk of fresh bread.

“Lance!” His mother slapped his hand. “Why do we have knives?”

“Itsh tashtier like zhat”, Lance mumbled, his mouth full.

Just like that, Keith knew Lance didn’t give his mother the whole picture. Otherwise she wouldn’t be able to calmly have her own breakfast, knowing that the healed olkari might be contacting his compatriots right at this moment.

“So, the thing I was arguing with him about,” Lidia said to Keith in such a tone, as if he was her co-conspirator. “I want him to take a break on the farm today. We don’t have that much work in the middle of the summer anyway, we’ll be fine without him. Let him take you to the sea, how about that? Or take him yourself. I’m sure it’ll be faster with your shuttle.”

Keith blinked. His first thought was to disagree, because they didn’t need to spend a day by the sea, they needed to visit the olkari’s enclave, wherever it might be… But then Keith realized it was the best suggestion ever, the perfect excuse to snag Lance from the farm and start dealing with the developing crisis on their hands!

Besides, spending the whole day with Lance without him being distracted by farm chores and the family sounded terrific. That was just the thing Keith came here for.

But Lance was already protesting. “Mom, I’m fine, I don’t need a break! And I didn’t have time to really show Keith how everything works…”

“You’ll show him tomorrow,” Lidia was dead set. “I’m sure Keith would enjoy spending the day on the beach more than you towing him around the farm. Look at how pale he is! This boy needs some sun! Right, Keith?”

Keith head was swimming a little in the face of such uncompromising mother-like care. Krolia never allowed herself to behave this way! But, strangely, it felt nice to be doted on in such fashion. He caught himself nodding absolutely sincerely.

“Sure, last time I was by the sea, it was ammonium. And the one before that was acidic. I’ll be glad to see the real one. It’s only…” Keith felt awkward admitting this. “I didn’t pack any swim trunks.”

Maybe they can drive by a store on their way to the sea? Then they’ll have to take Lance’s hover, because you can’t land a shuttle on a usual parking lot in front of a supermarket.

Lidia snorted. “Lance has a lot of spares. Well, it’s decided then. I’m going to make you some sandwiches. And don’t forget the sunscreen.”

Lance looked at Keith as if he betrayed him, sighed, but didn’t try to argue any more.

One more puzzle. Why didn’t Lance want to go to the beach? He loved it. What was the matter with him?

Well, this particular puzzle was solved before they even left the house. While Lance was loading the picnic basket, blankets, towels and other things necessary on the beach into the shuttle, his mother put her hand on Keith’s elbow and said softly, “Try to make him relax today, please, dear? He doesn’t like to show it, but after each healing he is not quite himself. And not only because he remembers his lost darling. It’s just very draining for him, can you see that too?”

Keith nodded. He knew better than anyone else how stubborn and secretive Lance could be in not showing his pain. He was like that himself too, except Lance masked it better. “So he never agrees to rest?” Keith lowered his voice.

“Never,” Lidia sounded defeated. “He says that he listens to me, but really, I don’t have any influence on this foolish boy! It’s very good you came, thank you.”

Quite unexpectedly for Keith, she stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek.

Krolia never allowed herself that either. And it was a pity, Keith decided. He kind of liked the kiss.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I don't mention it enough, so huge thanks to my awesome beta crumbcake! If you by some chance haven't read her stuff, go have a look at her [ABO klance series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/843675), that's the ABO how it should be, in my humble opinion :D Haven't made me cringe once... well, except maybe for the things that are supposed to make you cringe :)

Lance was unwilling to visit yesterday’s patient, at least at first. Keith had to argue with him for much too long, all while the shuttle was slowly warming up on the lawn by the farm, the argument becoming sillier by the minute. And right when Keith started to despair that Lance was going to throw a fit and refuse to go anywhere at all, possibly kicking Keith out of his house to boot, Lance suddenly agreed.

“But you’re not going to threaten him!” he posed his condition. “You know, don’t try to pull off your ‘be quiet, or else’ thing!”

“No, I won’t,” Keith said, mentally crossing his fingers. “I won’t even bribe him with your money for his silence. I just want to have a real talk, to try and explain the situation to him.”

And then, if he doesn’t agree, Keith was going to use heavy artillery, namely Pidge and Hunk. Their two geniuses were bound to think of something. Or, depending on the circumstances and the olkari’s personality, they could try to persuade him with Shiro’s moral authority. Only if all that failed, would Keith threaten him.

So, all in all, Keith decided, the situation was far from hopeless. They just needed to act now instead of waiting passively and hoping for the best. Which was what Lance was supposedly going for before Keith came along.

“I wasn’t going to wait and hope!” Lance cried out in response. “I just don’t want to attract the olkari’s attention! Maybe he isn't interested in sharing his miracle healing story with the rest!! There are bound to be some olkari that just go with the flow, right?”

Keith sincerely doubted it. The Olkari seemed to have a thing for collective upbringing with a focus on unity and interpersonal connection.

But, as it appeared, this particular olkari really was different from his ilk. First of all, after they called Doctor Georgeivic, they found out that Nehvar, son of Lomorr, didn’t live in the enclave, but in a quaint seaside town. Keith was honestly surprised. There were no seas on Olkarion, why would an olkari choose such an unfamiliar landscape?

“Maybe he wanted a change,” Lance snorted. “Would you think that a farm boy from the tropics, like myself, would settle on land so badly suited for agriculture?”

“Well… maybe,” Keith allowed. “An olkari who married a human girl might prove to be a cynical devil-may-care type.”

Lance laughed. “Come on, romantic relationships with the olkari are pretty common in these parts! There are three couples I know personally… One of them parted ways, two others are still together. Granted, they live in the enclave. There are a lot of humans living there, besides those romantically involved. Some of them are serious scientists, mostly botanists, and some are, you know, the ‘one with nature’ dorks, wiccans and the like, I don’t really know. Olkari tolerate them all, they are a hospitable bunch.”

Unfortunately, in this old town of three roads perched above a pebble beach there was no place to land a shuttle. They had to leave it at the bus station about a mile from their destination, and walk the rest of the way — always uphill.

When they reached the address Georgeivic sent them, the sun was already high in the sky. The sunscreen was mixing with sweat and burning Keith’s skin like crazy. Besides, its smell irritated his sensitive nose: Lance’s cosmetics obviously were not half-galra friendly. All in all, Keith’s mood left much to be desired.

The house resembled the one Lance’s family lived in, only it had two stories instead of three. The ground floor was made of roughly cut stone, the upper floor was painted white with plaster. One corner of the house was covered by bindweed with unfamiliar orange flowers.

The windows were shielded not only by wooden shutters with horizontal gaps — so that they let through only air, not the sun — but by solid bright-blue blinds. A garden bench, stood upright, was leaning on the wall near the entrance.

“Is this the right house?” Keith asked, rattling the iron gate.

The metal entrance, surprisingly, opened.

“Yes, that’s the one,” Lance verified on his navigator. “Let me message Doc one more time, maybe I heard him wrong…”

While Lance was busy with the doctor, Keith scouted the house perimeter. He didn’t see a soul. The back door was closed. The front door...

“Don’t jerk the handle like that,” Lance looked up from his phone screen. “Nobody here locks the door, but it’s impolite to enter without the hosts. See how the doormat is flipped wrong side up? It means that nobody’s home.”

“They don’t lock their doors?” Keith raised his eyebrows and pulled the handle.

Like the back door, it didn’t budge.

Lance blinked, honestly surprised. “Well… they’re unusual people, to be sure. Maybe they just aren’t used to it? Or they have something extremely valuable inside. Sometimes it happens.”

Keith once again looked the house over. If he were alone, he’d try to break in — there were no security measures in sight, unless the olkari installed some weird biotech. But he had a feeling Lance wouldn’t let him.

“Maybe they haven’t been released yet from the hospital?” he asked.

“I already checked with Doc,” Lance’s eyes were glued to the phone. “They were released last night. Nehvar felt better and asked to go home. Speaking of, Doc says he didn’t ask any questions, just took everything for granted.”

“Well, that’s one way to look at it…” Keith muttered.

“Maybe he was so glad to feel healthy, that he whisked his wife away for a second honeymoon?” Lance suggested dreamily. “And forgot to ask for an explanation… It would be cool, wouldn’t it.”

“Maybe so,” Keith said, full of doubt.

In his experience, no problem was ever solved that easily.

But… that was the rule from their old life. Here Lance had his own, new life. Maybe something would work out for a change?

Anyhow, Keith didn’t have any other plans except “talk to the olkari”. He could have asked Georgeivic for his comm number, or his wife’s comm — if, say, Nehvar avoided Earth’s tech. But Keith’s intuition somehow advised him against it. Maybe for the same reason Lance mentioned: they shouldn’t attract Nehvar’s attention to his miracle healing, if he himself didn’t think much about it.

Because he probably didn’t. Lance was most likely right: the now healthy patient rode into the sunset with his beloved to celebrate his new lease on life. Keith would definitely have done that in his place, forgetting all the whys and hows. A second chance acquired, you need to look forward, not back.

On the other hand, if Nehvar decided to cut his second honeymoon short and contact his compatriots or send a memo to the press, Keith and Lance would be helpless. So it was still necessary to find him first. Maybe try to gauge his possible reaction without really introducing themselves...

Keith fleetingly regretted that the Blades didn’t have a spy network anymore, not counting the survey posts on the outskirts of the known space. Of course, he could text Pidge, and she’d help. But it’s not the same as controlling the search himself.

Keith reached into his pocket for his comm to message Pidge, but Lance caught his wrist. “No way!” He exclaimed. “You already had your way with this detour! Now it's time to go swimming! We have missed the best hour for it already!”

Lance’s hands were firm, warm and calloused. Keith didn’t remember the callouses. Somehow, it paralyzed his will to resist. It probably would be OK; Nehvar would try to get more information out of Georgeivic before doing anything. And in any case, they probably have a day or two to make plans...

***

Lance promised that his favourite beach had a good spot for landing, and he was right.

Some time ago, maybe even before the Third World War, this must have been a noisy tourist mall. Now there were only a few structure beams left in place of the multistory building. But the spacious parking area, probably intended for wheeled transport, remained: it used to be covered with asphalt on top of concrete. The asphalt had melted since then, some tangled prickly shrubbery grew between the seams of concrete blocks, but the lot was still cleared enough to land.

A steep path was running down to the beach, winding in the shadow of a crimson-purplish rocky hill that protruded far into the sea. This hill and two tiny picturesque rocky islands — both almost bare, one with some kind of ruins barely distinguishable from the rock itself, the other with two crooked little pine trees growing on it — were sheltering a small natural bay. The day was very calm; even outside the bay the water seemed smooth and still, like a mirror.

“What a sight,” Keith murmured, while Lance was already running down to the beach, not wasting time on admiring the view.

They put their beach towel on the edge of the shade cast by the hill, and placed the foodstuff further into the shadow: Lance said that by noon it’d grow smaller but would never disappear completely.

Keith was still looking for a bandana in his backpack, when Lance discarded his T-shirt, and, yelling like a madman, rushed to the water. He tiptoed on the hot sand, but never slowed down.

Lance ran right into the tide and, without stopping, dove with his hands over his head, showing off his tanned shoulder blades. Keith smiled, watching him, but started to count seconds automatically. During their Voltron time, they used to do some endurance tests. Lance could hold his breath for two minutes, one and a half if he was moving. It was the second best result after Allura, who could without any ill effects not breathe for five minutes. Keith’s own result was a respectable fifty five seconds without movement, Shiro’s — forty eight, Hunk’s — a minute and forty five seconds (third place), and Pidge’s was thirty.

At the twenty fifth second Lance’s head, with hair blackened by water, appeared pretty far from the shore, halfway to the line of red and white buoys, that stretched between the farthest point of the rocky cliff and one of the small islands.

Keith wondered, who hung the buoys. He didn’t see any other signs of civilization here, not including ruins, even from the air.

As if in answer to his thoughts, he heard the hum of another hovercar.

A very nice off-road vehicle (dark navy six-seater, painted with orange lightning shapes) was slowly and carefully descending along the almost non-existent concrete road to the beach. Most likely, it was another “liberated” car from the bombed factory. Some locals came to have fun at the beach. 

Keith's instant suspicion calmed down at the thought, but he felt a bit cheated. He anticipated time alone with Lance, and now...

But the beach was relatively big; maybe they’d camp somewhere far away?

No such luck. The blue hovercar crawled over the pebbles (the driver was clearly overcautious; if Keith remembered correctly, a model like that could withstand much rougher handling) and stopped about fifty meters from Keith’s and Lance’s chosen spot. A woman jumped down from the driver seat and waved at Keith, as if she knew him.

He waved back automatically.

The newcomers, talking with each other in the peculiar mix of English and another language, sing-song like and totally unfamiliar to Keith, started to set their camp. They also chose a spot at the edge of the shade on the beach, but stayed farther away from the water.

The driver, a very tanned fifty-ish woman in white shorts and blouse so spacious it was blowing in the wind like a sail, came up to Keith, her flip-flops drowning in the small pebbles.

“Good morning!” She said in slightly accented English. “Are you Lance’s friend?”

Keith felt unpleasantly surprised. “Hm… yes?”

“Nice to meet you! I’m Snezhana,” she stretched out her hand, and Keith obediently shook it.

“Nice to meet you, Sne… zh-ana,” Keith could handle her name, it was no more difficult than the hundreds of alien names he needed to work his mouth around on a regular basis. 

“You can call me Snow, if it’s easier,” she winked. “We live down the road from Lance, just three farms away. You have a very distinguished shuttle. Is it a Galran make?”

Keith nodded, not knowing how to react.

“Ah, thought so! It was clearly retrofitted, but the silhouette is very telling. That’s my family over there, Stephan, Nils, Mila and Lichy. You can come meet us all if you like, we have very tasty pirozhkis!”

Keith felt flabbergasted by the torrent of her friendliness. “I’m Keith,” he said.

“Listen, Keith, I have a feeling I’ve seen you before! Do you visit often?”

Keith shook his head.

To his relief, Lance had made it back to shore and was heading their way, breathing heavily and dripping water on the hot pebbles.

“Snezhka!” He exclaimed. “Nils!” One of the newcomers, sitting on a huge towel, waved at Lance. “What a coincidence that you also decided to come to the beach today?”

“Today is Lichy’s name day,” Snezhana explained.

Lance’s expression dropped. “Damn!” he whispered. “I completely forgot!”

“Don’t worry, Lidia already brought us your gift earlier in the morning,” Snezhana replied equally hushed. And continued more loudly, “By the way, Lance, tell me, where have I seen your friend? I would never forget such a hot-looking guy,” she winked at Keith again, but he could tell it was mostly in jest (we’re not interested in each other, but I can’t miss a pretty face). Thanks to Lance, Keith was well acquainted with this type of flirting.

“Hmm, I don’t really know,” Lance rubbed his chin. “In a shampoo infomercial?”

Snezhana giggled, and even Keith smiled. He thought Lance ceased fire over his hair long ago.

The bearded Nils guy came up to them. Without a word, he and Lance shook hands, then he gave Keith a long look.

“Paladin Keith,” he said. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

Keith felt awkward. He never got used to being recognized. Aliens didn’t distinguish between human faces that well, and, as soon as he took off the official sash of the Head Blade, he immediately became as good as invisible. Of course, Galra could recognize him alright, but their cultural code forbade them from speaking on personal matters with strangers; although the cultures began to mix, Keith didn’t expect any paparazzis on Daibazaal anytime soon.

As for Earth, he was hardly ever recognized even right after the war: on most of the posters the paladins were wearing their helmets.

“Are you kidding?” Snezhana glanced astonished at Keith, then at Nils, Lance and at Keith again. “A real Voltron Paladin? In the flesh?”

Nils nodded. “I remembered him well,” he said. “Because of his scar. And the eyes.”

“Wow,” Snezhana gave Keith quite a different look. “I… I’m honored to meet you too, obviously!” Then she stared at Lance. “I can’t believe it! You never told anyone you knew one of the paladins!”

“We went to the Garrison school together,” Lance was smiling. “Before the invasion, of course. Keith was in the elite fighter class, and I was in the cargo pilot class, but we had some lectures in common. Keith is here on vacation, pretty much incognito. Even war heroes need to have a little R&R somewhere.” 

Keith was so surprised he couldn’t add a word to this outrageous… not exactly a lie, technically Lance didn’t say a word that wasn’t true!

“I see… sorry for being nosy,” Snezhana smiled a little awkwardly. “OK, have a good day, guys… Do you want some pirozhkis?”

“By Stephan? Of course!” Lance exclaimed. “And we have egg and smoked chicken sandwiches. Fair trade?”

“You don’t even have to ask,” Snezhana chuckled, and said to Keith with an overdramatic expression, “Lidia has her own secret recipe on how to smoke a chicken, that she doesn’t share with anyone! And I know for a fact she was offered another car for it!”

Lance took their picnic cooler from the sand and came up to the neighbour’s towel. After nearly two minutes of exchanging handshakes, smiles and laughs with side-glances at Keith — Keith tried to smile and wave every time — Lance returned.

“Well, have you finished?” Lance asked, meaning the sunscreen Keith had been applying. “Let’s go swim then, the water is perfect! Or are you ready to eat? I didn’t exaggerate, Stephan’s pirozhkis are almost as good as Hunk’s empanadas!”

“What are pirozhkis?”

“As I said, they are like empanadas, only bigger and baked instead of fried. They also can have different fillings, these ones are with rhubarb and cabbage. Don’t look at me like that, it’s tasty. I didn’t believe it either until I tried!”

“Not hungry,” Keith decided. “Let’s swim first.”

Hopefully, Lance would forget about his strange desire to feed Keith some dodgy local (or not local?) cuisine.

The water really was perfect. It immediately cooled the heated skin of Keith’s legs, and clung to him like silk. Lance was treading water in front of him, his back to the ocean, so he could be facing Keith, grinning widely. His hair dried a bit while he was on shore and now the ends were curling up. The blue markings on his cheeks looked almost white against his tanned skin.

“Race me to the buoys?” Lance suggested.

“Wait a sec,” Keith grabbed his hand. “Don’t they know?”

“Don’t they know what?”

“That you’re a Voltron Paladin?”

“I was a Voltron Paladin. Past tense. And why would they know?”

“But…” Keith stuttered.

He came here only yesterday, and today all the neighbours already knew he was Lance’s guest, even those who lived several miles from the farm. Could it be that for ten years nobody figured out what Lance was doing during the invasion? Like, this Nils guy could have recognized Lance too!

And also… Lance changed a lot, that was true, but he also stayed essentially the same. Keith could believe that his thirst for fame and appreciation was a surface trait, born out of his inferiority complex and being unsure of himself. That after he was shaken by the ordeals of war, he lost his hubris and started to find joy in small things. But he still couldn’t imagine a Lance not entertaining the neighbours (and especially their kids) with the tall tales of his heroic deeds!

Although, he could figure it out by reading “The Pink Book”. Lance hardly ever mentioned himself there. He described some battles, he included lots of philosophical-like musings and deliberations. But what he said most often about himself was “as it was due to the Red (or Blue) Paladin”. Like him being a unique person wasn’t relevant, like anybody in his place would do the same. Maybe that’s what made the book so relatable, Keith didn’t really know.

To his surprise, Keith felt deep boiling frustration. It’s one thing to not write Lance’s name anywhere. It’s quite the other, that even the people closest to him (at least geographically) are none the wiser!

“Okay fine, did nobody figure it out by your Altean markings?” Keith asked, at wit’s end. “You even wrote it in your book how you got them!”

Lance shook his head. “Don’t you know it’s the peak of fashion now? Making facial tattoos like Alteans, or Galra, or some other aliens? You can go for a temporary or permanent one. The village mechanic, Toivo, is our amateur tattoo artist, he always offers to make me a sleeve.”

Keith didn’t even know if it was funny or sad. After a little thinking, though, he decided it’s better to laugh than weep.

Lance was right, of course. Nothing good would come out of being treated like a local celebrity. Hunk endured it with grace, but Hunk had the smoothest personality Keith ever met, and he lived a very different life, travelling from one zone of conflict to the other, constantly dealing with the VIPs (or wanna-be VIPs). Pidge also didn’t mind the fame, but she was practically living in her lab, chatting mostly with her co-workers. Keith himself was lucky to be either on missions all the time, or doing paperwork in his solitary office. The few times he was forced to play the celebrity role on some charity function or other, organized by Ezor, he hid behind the Blades’ official agenda.

Keith wondered how Shiro dealt with it. Like Lance, he lived in a small quaint place with only a few neighbours. Maybe that’s why he started to wear glasses instead of correcting his eyesight once and for all? Keith decided to ask him as soon as an opportunity presented itself. Which, judging by his track record, could take forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like the story, please leave a comment! They make me healthier and happier.  
> If you don't agree with the way I treat a character or a situation, don't hesitate to leave a comment too. I enjoy meaningful discussion :)
> 
> Also, my tumblr and twitter accs are pretty much dead, so if you really like the story, consider sharing the link or posting a rec! I'm the kind of author that thrives on attention.
> 
> P. S. I'm not from the Balkans, I'm just stupidly in love with the natural beauty of Monte Negro (that's where the first 10 chapters are taking place, although I tweaked many things to my liking). So if I got anything horribly wrong, don't hesitate to correct me.


	6. Chapter 6

In one of the group homes Keith lived before Shiro dragged him to the Garrison, there once was a social worker who brought some kind of glass pendants and hung them on the lamp in the recreation room. For most of the day, they were uselessly gathering dust. But around three pm the sunlight would strike them at the right angle, throwing a gently moving colourful rainbow on the white wall.

At the time Keith thought it was the prettiest thing in the world.

Since then he saw many wonderful sights, some of them terrifyingly beautiful: two black holes with a blue giant suspended between them in a massive game of tug-o-war; attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion; three suns rising above the mountain range that pierced a thin atmosphere of a distant planet; wild geysers on an icy satellite, shooting tons of emerald-green water many miles into space.

But he never again experienced that childlike wonder he had when looking at the artificial rainbow, except now, when he saw the play of sunshine on the pebbled bottom of the sea through the crystal clear water, where every patch of seaweed, every branch of dull brownish corals suddenly became majestic. 

Maybe it was because this beauty had no underlying menace, which in Keith’s experience was a rarity.

And maybe it was because of the company.

Lance yanked his leg from under him, making Keith submerge deep. When he turned around to resurface, for a moment he saw Lance under him, on the backdrop of this brigth bottom. His broad shoulders, thin waist and hips were caressed by the sun through the water, with the play of light accentuating his colors — brown skin, pink scar on his back, short bright-blue trunks...

Keith's throat swelled, and he didn’t realize at first that it was because he ran out of air.

Lance resurfaced almost earlier than Keith, despite having just been swimming several feet beneath him.

“Hey, how about a race to the island?” he asked teasingly.

“No, thank you,” Keith snorted, removing wet hair from his forehead. “I’m not going to race a seal.”

“A seal?” Lance sounded offended. “I’m a graceful dolphin!”

To prove his point, he emitted a series of clicking sounds and a yell, reminding Keith of a vintage car horn.

Keith couldn’t help laughing, and had to spit out water. “Still no,” he said, “there is no competing with sea mammals. Let’s just swim there, nice and easy.”

“Spoilsport!” Lance said, disappointed, but didn’t insist.

Keith was not a bad swimmer. They taught swimming in the Garrison’s school, because the exercise was similar to controlling your body in zero gravity. Keith even had the highest score for the test. But he never liked floating in a chlorine-smelling pool, or in a murky water tank in which they dived with oxygen masks.

The sea was different.

It felt like he was floating or possibly flying above the bluish abyss, where the air somehow is firm enough to hold you without a chute or a plane. Keith saw his own shadow, gliding along the bottom, which made the feeling of flying even stronger.

“We missed the best hour, as I said,” Lance complained. “When the sun is low above the horizon, it lights the water through much better, you can see everything!”

Keith didn’t think they missed anything. He had the feeling that it was the best hour he has had in the last ten years.

Well, not exactly. That day when they, with the help of the Coalition United Forces, successfully evacuated all the people from the three moons of Nartim, to save them from supernova radiation, was better. But only because Keith couldn’t in good conscience equate the saving of millions of sentient lives to his personal happiness.

While Keith was plodding towards the island with his rusty crawl strokes, Lance was circling around him, like a satellite around a planet.

Because of this, Keith moved even slower, since it was virtually impossible not to watch Lance. He was always handsome — Keith knew it, the same way he knew his other friends were beautiful too. Shiro looked perfect, like a male model from a fitness magazine; Allura was a Greek goddess; Pidge was so cute even Keith had to restrain himself from petting her like a small fluffy animal; and Hunk had the prettiest eyes and the warmest hugs on this side of Orion's belt. Keith loved each and every one of them and would die for them without a second thought.

But now, looking at Lance, Keith felt his throat dry up, and he could think only about how he wants to slide his hands up and down his flat stomach with faint, but obvious lines of muscles, to spread his fingers on the firm biceps, to follow the happy trail from his belly-button to his groin...

During their one and only night together, Keith didn’t have a chance to properly explore Lance’s body and remembered very little of what he did learn about him. His memory retained only the faint impression of warmth, damp skin and too stiff shoulders. That was all.

It would be a gift to touch Lance when he is happy and relaxed...

No wonder that when they reached the small island, Keith felt a little dizzy. And not because of the sun.

“Be careful,” Lance was first to climb up the slippery stones and extended a hand to help Keith. “Don’t slip into the cracks, sea urchins may be hiding there. They sting pretty bad.”

“Got it,” said Keith, obediently using the offered hand to lift himself up the stones. “Huh, and I’ve just thought that for once all this beauty wasn’t out to kill me!”

“The best things are always dangerous,” Lance answered with unexpected sincerity.

‘Like you are,’ Keith thought. ‘Or I wouldn’t be trembling like this.’

They were standing close to each other, their hands crossed between them. Keith’s left palm was resting on Lance’s wrist, Lance’s right palm was on Keith’s other wrist. Their limbs were kind of in the way; if not for that, Keith thought fleetingly, he could raise his head and kiss Lance. With their miniscule height difference Keith wouldn’t even have to stand on tip toes...

“Do you wanna explore the fort?” asked Lance with boyish vigor, breaking the tension.

“What fort?” Keith asked.

“Well, the ruins, of course! It used to be a small church, actually, but here every church is pretty much a fortress… Come on!”

There was hardly much to explore: a ‘fortress’ now consisted only of one corner, barely distinguishable from hard rock that hosted it, and a part of a stone wall. Ruins took up almost the whole tiny island; there was a crooked sun-burnt tree growing right in the middle. Lance said it was an olive tree, but it looked ill and didn’t bear fruit, because there was not enough soil. Keith had no idea how olive types were supposed to look like, so he only shrugged.

The exploration, which basically amounted to climbing up a pile of rocks and having a look around, took less than a minute. From here, the shore seemed very close by, Keith didn’t have to squint to see their beach towel and picnic cooler.

He also had a perfect view of Lance's neighbours, who were probably playing a game: they blindfolded the small girl (Lichy, right?), and were rotating her, clapping their hands.

If he looked the other way, he saw only the sea — an endless expanse of it.

“It’s Italy beyond the horizon,” Lance said. “I haven’t found the time to go there yet. They say, the Colosseum is still standing, the Galra didn’t destroy it. I wonder why. Maybe they wanted to use it.”

“Aren’t you a good enough swimmer to just pop over there after lunch?” Keith snorted.

“I’m good here,” Lance said. “Very good.”

Their eyes met.

Lance was standing extremely close, his lowered hand was almost touching Keith’s.

‘And what if I asked you to fly away with me?’ Keith’s thoughts came unbidden.

Of course, Lance wouldn’t agree. Why would he?

Besides, Keith never intended to ask Lance to come with him. On the contrary, he came here hoping that, if everything went according to plan, he might… well, stay? Or not, he couldn’t imagine actually abandoning the Blades; just, maybe, he could come here, to Lance, more often than once a year.

“What about you? Do you like it here?” whispered Lance.

“Very much,” Keith licked his suddenly dried up lips.

“I called it! I’ve been inviting you for ages! You should admit I’m always right about such things, oh fearless leader!”

Suddenly Lance, without asking for permission, tucked a lock of Keith’s hair behind his ear.

“Let’s go,” he said. “We need to get back into the shade, or you’re going to get sunburnt. Look at you, you’re pink already!”

Keith wanted to say it wasn’t because of the sun, but the words got lodged in his throat. He was thirty two, for God’s sake! Why in Lance's presence did he still feel like an eighteen year old boy?!

***

The rest of the day was good. Maybe too good.

They went swimming again, ate the food they brought, and climbed the rocky hill — there was a steep trail leading to the top, where they found a small memorial to the victims of some local riots in the end of the twentieth century.

They even exchanged small talk with Snezhana and her family — although Keith never figured out who was in what relationship with whom in this group. All five of them were of different ethnicities and nobody could be anyone’s adopted child judging by their ages. Even Lichy who looked like a teenager to Keith, apparently, was twenty five.

She asked Keith for an autograph, and he, of course, couldn’t refuse.

“You know Red Paladin, the author of the Pink Book, don’t you?” she asked, a bit shyly.

Keith barely managed not to wince. “I do.”

“Oh, that was a silly question, wasn’t it?” Lichy got even shier. “Of course you know him, you were Voltron together! I’m sorry, I’m just… please, when you meet him, tell him he has a huge fan here! His book practically saved my life two years ago when I had another bout of depression!”

“It's a very good book,” Stephan said, hugging Lichy’s shoulders. “It helps you move forward.”

“I’d really like to meet the Red Paladin,” said Mila, a very curvy dark-skinned beauty, so attractive that even Keith noticed her appeal. “I usually don’t like to read, but this book was an exception. Lance, don’t you want to invite your namesake one day too?”

For a second, Keith felt the moment was surreal, that was so bizarre. Lance’s namesake, indeed!

“I invited him, but he canceled on me at the last minute,” Lance sighed dramatically. “He is one of those busy serious types. He doesn’t have time for R&R in the country!”

“Oh, right, he is working on rebuilding Altea, isn’t he,” Shezhana nodded. “Well, say hi to him for me too, I also liked the book very much!”

“And I,” Nils added.

“We will tell him,” Keith agreed.

On their way back to the car Lance was positively radiant.

“I can’t believe it! They like my book!”

“Almost everybody likes it.”

“Our neighbours are not just everybody! Oh, it’s so lucky we met them today, or I’d never think to ask!”

Keith could only shake his head. He barely avoided clenching his teeth in frustration because of Lance — why did they think he went to Altea?! It was plainly written in The Pink Book, that Lance came back to Earth after the war! Were they reading with their eyes open or closed?!

As for Lance, he seemingly didn’t care — he was simply glad the people that lived next to him appreciated his talent!

Suddenly he pulled Keith into a one-arm hug and kissed his cheek.

It happened so quickly Keith could barely register the weight of Lance’s hand on his shoulder and the warmth of his lips on his skin.

“Why?” he asked, astonished, touching his cheek.

“Thank you for the best day!” Lance said cheerfully. “I wouldn’t have found the time to soak on the beach if not for you!”

...Because of this tamest of cheek kisses, in the evening Keith found himself pacing from one end of his room to the other, as if trying to make a groove on the wooden floor.

At first Cosmo was following him with his gaze, then he got bored with Keith and fell asleep, taking up the whole bed. Keith was so out of sorts he let this awful breach of discipline slide.

If not for the kiss, Keith would accept his defeat. The coffee from a cezve vs. instant coffee and all that. It didn’t really matter what happened ten years ago; he could have misinterpreted the things Lance wrote in his book. Maybe it was just Keith, thinking there were sparks between them on the beach — Lance probably didn’t think about him that way, or he wouldn't break the tension every time with some childish or innocent phrase...

But the kiss happened.

One guy wouldn’t just kiss another on the cheek just like that, even out of gratitude. Even if they slept together before.

Or would he..?

Keith’s father and his firefighter friends would never do anything like that. They’d clap each other on the shoulders, maybe hugged once in a blue moon. For a galra, such a gesture of affection is inconceivable — it’s something that can happen between either family (like parents and small kids) or lovers (but not publicly). But Lance is from Cuba. Latinos do kiss each other even on the lips, it’s kind of normal for them, right..? But Keith never saw Lance doing something like that before... 

His thoughts on the subject felt heavy and tangled beyond hope. That was exactly why Keith tried to keep away from interpersonal relationships all his life.

In any other circumstances Keith would just ask directly. The worst thing that could happen was awkwardness, bound to pass sooner or later. Keith knew his and Lance’s friendship was stronger than that. After all, they’ve already had sex once and it didn’t ruin anything.

But...

Allura’s ghost was like an invisible guard, blocking his way, and he couldn’t defeat it with any weapon at his disposal. The last thing Keith wanted was to hurt Lance with unwanted advances. Or with putting him in a position where he’d have to let him down gently. Because Lance would feel bad about not returning his feelings. He is too open, too giving...

Keith started to dial Shiro’s number — again! — then stopped. He had to remind himself that he was thirty two, a grown up adult person, not an eighteen year old teenager! He was not going to run crying to his favourite mentor and older brother!

So, being a grown up adult person, Keith called his mother.

He forgot to check the time zones, but Krolia answered after the first ring. It meant she wasn’t sleeping and wasn’t in one of her endless Council sessions.

“Yes?” she asked, panting slightly.

She was probably training. Keith hoped she was training, as opposed to fighting someone, for example.

“Mom,” he began, going straight to business as it was customary between them. “What would you feel, if an old friend offered you a sexual and romantic partnership despite knowing you still had feelings for dad?”

There was a beat of silence where Krolia's old friends flashed before Keith's eyes. “It’s a very interesting question, son,” Krolia said at last. “Depending on what person it was and what kind of partnership exactly they had in mind, I could be either annoyed or interested. But in any case, I’d be flattered.”

“Thank you for answering.”

“If you don’t need any more help, let’s wrap this up. I’m a little busy.”

Now Keith was a bit worried, immediately having imagined his mom smack in the middle of a tight circle of saber-tooth tigers. “Mom, do _you_ need help? Are you alright?”

“Better than alright. I’ll tell you more next time you call me. And now I strongly advise you to go find Lance and make a pass at him. It’s high time you found someone too.”

“What do you mean ‘too’?!”

But she already cut the connection.

Keith frowned looking at the comm in his palm. There was a strain in his mother’s voice… Almost as if she were...

No, it can’t be. Galra had different norms of propriety, but she still wouldn’t answer her comm in that case..! Hopefully.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: when writing it more than a year ago, I tried to make Lance and Keith sound as authentically American (in the sence of being entranched in American-ish culture) as I could get away with; and still, translating for English-speaking audience, I had to change some jokes and quotes for them to be funny again! And they say, machine translation is going to replace living translators... As if.
> 
> Did anybody find an Easter egg? :)


	7. Chapter 7

Despite all the rationalization, it was terribly scary to go to Lance’s room; scary to the point of upset stomach and cold sweat on his palms and between his toes.

But of course, Keith managed. Is he or is he not a paladin?! He commanded armies! He rescued victims buried under collapsed buildings! There was no way that a few steps down the hall would be his undoing.

Keith knocked on the doorframe, then opened the door without waiting for an answer.

Lance was sitting on his bed with his legs crossed, feet encased in striped socks (why?! The heat was sweltering!), playing solitaire. He lifted his head to greet Keith, beaming smile, as always.

“Keith! Do you want to hang out? I was going to bed early, but if you…”

“Not exactly…” Keith hesitated on the doorstep.

The ice-cold fear mixed with nervous anticipation turned his stomach upside down, prickling his fingertips.

“I wanted to ask you… that night when Allura disappeared… I mean, what happened between us… Do you mind if we do it again?”

For a moment Lance was unreadable, and Keith had an awful feeling that he was going to tell him in his coldest voice to go away and never return. But instead Lance beamed again, this time with a sweet and mysterious smile.

“Sure,” he said. “Why not? I mean, I don’t mind that at all.”

Why not?! Because of thousands of reasons!

But Keith was not going to question him. Because Lance stood up, came closer to Keith and cradled his face in his palms. His fingers caressed Keith’s temples, brushing away his hair. Lance met Keith’s eyes as if he was seeing him for the first time.

“What about that whole thing over your coffee from a cezve versus an instant one?” Keith whispered, because he was somehow afraid of speaking aloud.

“What?” Lance frowned, seemingly bewildered.

“Your coffee analogy. When we were in the car, you said…”

“Dude!” Lance breathed out and giggled, then lowered his head, pressing his forehead to Keith’s. “Have you been thinking about that since yesterday?”

‘I’ve been thinking about it for several phoebs,’ Keith didn’t say.

“First of all,” Lance murmured, pressing his lips to Keith’s eyelids, closed on their own volition, “I was talking about piloting, and only about that! I wouldn’t compare people to food, what kind of person do you think I am? It’s a jerkass way to think about relationships, as if they are supposed to only benefit you!”

A jerkass way to think about relationships? Keith would never look at Lance’s metaphor like that. But, again, neither relationships, nor metaphors were his strong suit.

“And, second of all…” Lance continued, his breath tickling Keith’s eyelashes. “Were I to use the analogy… You, Keith, are no instant coffee! You’re probably some kind of green unroasted Arabica!”

Keith couldn’t help laughing. He felt weightless and carefree all of a sudden, as if a gust of wind could blow him away to the stratosphere. He hugged Lance’s waist and pulled him as close as he could, the way he wanted to on that tiny island this morning.

“Do you get,” he mumbled into the fabric of Lance’s t-shirt on his shoulder, “that this isn’t about sex?”

“Yeah, don’t worry, I know all about your social awkwardness,” Lance answered in a strained voice. “But if you expect to fuck me today, instead of, say, spending our first date in an emergency room, I suggest you ease up a little. You’re cracking my ribs.”

Keith laughed harder, but relaxed his hold for Lance. 

He raised his head right when Lance lowered his, so they bumped noses.

Lance ouched, Keith laughed harder still. He held Lance’s cheeks with both hands and kissed him, keeping him in place. He knew he wasn’t a good kisser — his whole experience was limited to Lance ten years ago. But he did his best. He wanted to do it right this time, to show Lance how much he loved him. To not let him into the void alone.

Somehow Lance was in the midst of a hopeless battle even among the sunny valleys and mountains, beside the sea, surrounded by loving family and friendly neighbours. Obviously, from now on Keith needed to watch this doofus like a hawk.

“Slow down, slow down,” Lance murmured, letting go of Keith’s lips. “Why in such a hurry?”

Keith didn’t answer him, just switched from Lance’s mouth to his chin and neck, covering them in wet, hot kisses. He wanted to use his teeth too, to leave a mark (no, many marks), but he didn’t know if Lance minded hickies where he couldn’t cover them.

“You can bite if you want to,” maybe Lance had mind reading powers too, besides healing? “Only don’t use your extendable… ah..! canines!”

Keith had no idea what he was talking about , but he didn’t hesitate to use the permission. He wanted everything, more, stronger, harder… He wanted to see, lick and taste every inch of Lance’s body. Not like the last time, fumbling in the dark, not knowing what they were doing.

He noticed he was pushing Lance towards the bed only when both of them dropped on it, completely ruining the arrangement of cards on the comforter.

Lance flipped them and leaned above Keith, blocking light from the lamp on the ceiling. “You’re stunning…” He whispered reverently.

Keith thought that Lance was much more so, especially now, with his lips reddened with kisses, with a bruise on his neck and his hair tousled by Keith’s fingers.

“Just a sec,” Lance kissed him quickly. “Let me lock the door...”

He leapt off the bed and, indeed, turned the lock, then came up to the dresser. “I have lube,” he said, “but no condoms. What about you?”

Keith shook his head.

It was stupid of him, of course, considering he came here planning to confess and, hopefully, start a physical relationship with Lance. But somehow he never thought of stocking up the necessary items. Maybe his subconscious mind was afraid to jinx it.

“We don’t have to do something we need condoms for,” Keith said.

“We don’t, but I want to,” Lance smiled at him. “Crap, you can’t buy anything here so late at night!” Keith frowned: it was about seven in the evening. “But I don’t think we need them anyway? I’m healthy, Doc makes me go through all the blood tests regularly.”

“Same here,” Keith gulped. “It’s just… can you bottom?”

“No problem. I like it both ways.” Lance winked at him, and Keith’s brain short circuited. When did Lance manage to try it “both ways”? Or did he and Allura...

But no, nope, Keith didn’t want to think about how fluidly Alteans could shapeshift and if Lance could do something like that now. Lance’s present form was everything he wished for at the moment.

Lance threw a plastic tube, half-filled with transparent gel, on the bed, and climbed up himself.

He leaned down to kiss Keith with hunger and tenderness, that somehow combined together absolutely naturally, and said sweetly, “Actually, I’m not set on anal. If you want something else…”

“I want everything,” Keith murmured and grasped hair on the back of Lance’s scalp, tugging his head back and exposing his neck for his ministrations. Lance moaned, trembled while he melted in Keith’s hands. And that was the most perfect thing in the world.

Keith realized he couldn't — and more importantly, wouldn’t — keep his lips from Lance’s neck. And his hands seemed glued to Lance’s back. The fact that Lance was lying atop of him was also right and proper, because Keith could feel his weight like that, breathe in his scent (a flowery shower gel, a citrusy shampoo and a creamy moisturizer). At last Keith got a chance to feel every muscle with his hands, to remember, to learn, to understand...

Keith slid his palms under the band of Lance’s pajamas and squeezed his asscheeks — there was hardly anything to squeeze, but the firm muscles felt perfect, and Keith thought that he could just keep his hands there forever, if not for obvious logistic difficulties. Lance’s spine curved, bringing their crotches together — quiznack, what a divine sensation! Keith saw bright flashes behind his eyelids, and he thought he could come from that alone, just like the last time. But no, Lance wanted more, and Keith wanted to give him everything he wished for.

“Take off your clothes,” Keith shoved Lance down on the bed.

He was sure that if he were to try and undress Lance, he’ll either spend several hours doing that, or have a premature ejaculation. Possibly, one after the other.

His hands were trembling even after he took off his own pants.

Lance whipped off his pajamas and started helping Keith. His deft fingers quickly undid the belt and the zipper, and he took down Keith’s pants together with his boxers, while Keith was clumsily taking off his t-shirt, almost suffocating himself in the process.

As soon as they were both naked, Keith tackled Lance on the bed again, hanging over him. He decided, the view was equally good from here, maybe even better. Now Lance was backlit by the lamp, so Keith could see every eyelash, every freckle...

“I want to suck you off,” Lance said hungrily, licking his lips.

“Later,” Keith latched onto his half-opened mouth. “Didn’t you want… you know? Anal?”

“Why can’t we do both?” Lance waggled his eyebrows. “Seriously, Keith, you have an impressive dick right there! It’s a crime to not give such a treasure more action!”

Keith snorted. “Well, if you insist…”

Keith wanted to flip them around again, but Lance shook his head. “No, you can just… yeah, just move a bit forward, stand on your knees over me… like that, perfect. Are you up to the challenge?”

“Are you fucking serious?!” But Keith immediately realized that Lance was not mocking him; he felt his legs trembling like the rest of him.

“Baby, I’m always serious about fucking!” Lance winked again.

Actually, Keith wasn’t sure if he was up to the challenge. In that pose Lance’s face was right between his legs, vulnerable to being sat on. It felt dirty, and not in a good way. Keith would never do something that degrading if Lance didn't ask!

But, to be fair, Keith’s dick was right there near Lance’s lips, he wouldn’t even need to crane his head. Lance could just open his mouth and take him in. That was strangely exciting.

“Yeah, like that, good,” Lance repeated, enveloping the head in his wet warmth. Then he licked along the shaft, and Keith immediately forgot his fears and awkwardness. He could only think about those silken lips, that skillful tongue, travelling up and down along the vein… Then Lance took him fully into his mouth, sucked in his cheeks — and Keith felt as if he was going to explode.

“Perfect,” Lance briefly released him, slurring as if he was drunk. “Give me a second to get used to it, and you can fuck my mouth.”

“What?!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll stop you, if you go overboard,” to support this claim, Lance’s big hands firmly settled on Keith’s hips, with his thumbs almost on his waist. “You won’t hurt me, I’m going to like it. Come on, do it.”

So Keith did. He didn’t know how Lance managed it, but somehow he really arranged everything so that Keith didn’t need to adjust at all, just chase his pleasure in the warm cave of Lance’s mouth.

He was almost scared by how damn good it felt.

Keith leaned back, clumsily searching for Lance’s dick. It was firm, long and curved, lying on his stomach. So, Lance didn’t lie that he liked giving head like that. Keith carefully held the shaft in one hand, afraid to cause pain. He didn’t have the presence of mind to use the lube; he wouldn’t be able to find the tube on the bed anyway. It was hard to coordinate his movements as it was, the flashes of pleasure running down his spine were really distracting. But Keith was an ace in battling several enemies; he managed.

Lance moaned around his dick, Keith briefly choked because of how that vibration felt travelling through his whole body — and, being incredibly close already, came.

He realized he didn’t warn Lance, panicked and tried to move away, but Lance held him in place.

“Not so fast, cowboy,” Lance manhandled Keith down his torso and half-sat on the bed. His face looked incredibly beautiful, his lips bright, a fine thread of spittle and traces of come on his chin.

Keith felt hotness coiling low in his stomach. Quiznack, he just came but felt like he could go again in a couple of minutes!

“Keith, I won’t be able to finish just like that,” said Lance, still a little slurry. “Can you..?”

He didn’t need to end the sentence: Keith immediately moved down his body, took in the head of his dick and tried to suck in the whole thing.

“Wait, wait, too fast! You’ll gag!”

Lance was right. Keith almost threw up, had to spit out the penis and take several deep breaths, pressing his sweaty forehead to Lance’s equally sweaty hip.

“You can start with your hand,” Lance was panting a little. “It’s cool to just lick around the head, if you want, but I can come even without it, I actually like hands more than mouth… Hngh! You have calluses!”

“I’m sorry!” Keith tried to open his hand, but Lance caught his wrist.

“Don’t apologize for making me lose it! Look, I’ll help you…”

Lance’s broad palms with long fingers were effortlessly directing Keith’s hands, and somehow it was incredibly sexy. Maybe even the sexiest thing out of everything they did so far. Keith was mesmerized, looking at how their skin tones contrasted nicely against each other.

It ended too fast, in Keith’s opinion. Lance held out maybe for a minute, then moaned again, throwing his head back, and painting their hands white. Keith noticed that there wasn’t much ejaculate; Keith usually released much more.

Out of curiosity, Keith leaned and licked the seed. It was salty; nothing special.

Lance’s gaze flickered down to Keith’s lips. “So, how was it?” Lance asked, smiling and still breathing heavily.

“I wouldn't put it on a sandwich, but it’s not too disgusting,” Keith shrugged.

Lance laughed. “I mean the whole thing! The sex!”

“I didn’t really get it,” Keith smirked. “We need to try again.”

“OK. Give me a minute,” Lance shielded his eyes with his arm. “Let me catch my breath and go to the bathroom.”

“Why?” Keith asked it, and immediately realized what a stupid question it was. Lance probably just needed to pee.

“Prep. I didn’t exactly anticipate anal sex this evening. I should have started with a good rinse, but things kind of got hot.”

Keith gulped. He was caressing Lance’s stomach, the way he had fantasized just this morning, and couldn’t believe he wasn’t dreaming.

Lance’s plans almost went awry. The thing was, when he swept his arm away from his eyes, Keith just couldn’t help kissing him. Lance apparently couldn’t help answering in the same fashion. So it was a miracle they managed to break apart only after a few fevered minutes.

At last Lance escaped into the bathroom — fortunately, his room had an ensuite, so nobody had to get dressed. He even left the door cracked open.

“Is it going to take long?” Keith asked, suddenly feeling awkward again.

He realized they had been rolling above the crumpled comforter and scattered cards, so he decided to get the bed into a state more fit for sleeping… or other activities. It felt strange to do that naked, but getting dressed would be even more bizarre, right?

“No, I just need a couple of minutes,” Lance answered.

“How do you know how to do all those things?” Keith just had to ask.

“I experimented here and there.”

“Alone?” His curiosity might be getting the better of him.

“Sometimes, sometimes not. We had neighbours once, a family. An older couple and a daughter, Lisa, she used to be in the Resistance. We kind of got close, and, well… things happened. Then there was Ben, he worked with Toivo in his shop. We talked about cars. Once we had a heart-to-heart, and then we dated for a spell, until he went away. Found another job. Then Marco took me to a dance club in the city a couple of times — well, it wouldn’t be called a club before the invasion, but there were drinks, and a dance floor, and comparatively many people. I made some good acquaintances.”

Keith listened to that account truly astonished. On one hand, he felt incredibly grateful that Lance was experienced. On the other hand, it was difficult to reconcile this confession with his mental image of Lance still partially in mourning about Allura. He also had the impression that Lance treated sex very seriously, that he wouldn’t go that far with someone unless he was ready to commit. Casual hook ups and one night stands just didn’t seem very like him!

The water stopped, and Lance returned to the bedroom.

“Well, that’s it,” he winked. “My body is ready!”

And Keith should have kept his big mouth shut, but he asked anyway, “You mean, sex for you is just physical? Nothing special?” Maybe that’s why he agreed to Keith’s proposition so easily? Although Keith could swear it was something more!

Lance’s expression hardened. “Wait a sec. Are you judging me now?”

“No!” Keith backtracked; the last thing he wanted was for Lance to get offended. The thing was, he was incredibly afraid that Lance would try to keep this a friends-with-benefits arrangement. “I’m just… trying to understand. You said that night, ten years ago, that it had to be me. And also, you have Allura’s picture beside your bed… It doesn’t look like you date…”

“Well, yeah, I never brought anyone back here,” Lance shrugged. “It never came up.”

He sighed and sat beside Keith, tussling his own hair. “I don’t really know how to express it…” he said without much enthusiasm. “I thought you’ve read my book?”

Keith nodded. “Have read” was something of an understatement. “You wrote that physical intimacy is a way to get to know the person, to love and cherish them.”

Lance grinned. “Exactly! See, you do understand!” 

Keith didn’t understand anything, but he didn’t want to admit it. He regretted ever breaching this topic. 

“I didn’t realize it right away, it took time. First I was really stuck on Allura, every little thing reminded me of her. I was sure I would never be intimate with anybody else ever again, and I honestly didn’t want to. I never had a boner in two years. And then I was sitting with Lisa on the roof, drinking wine, and she was saying that nobody would love her because of her awful scars, and she was afraid to take her clothes off in front of anybody… And I was, like, no, it’s nonsense, I have two friends who are the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen, and they both have facial scars — meaning you and Shiro, of course,” Lance bumped Keith’s shoulder. “Well, one word led to another, and suddenly we were kissing. And I never felt like I was doing something wrong, or cheating on Allura’s memory, not then, not later. It was almost as if Allura would, maybe, even be proud of me… I don’t know. What do you think?”

Keith didn’t really know either. “I think she would be. Proud, I mean.”

“How about you, hotshot? I’m sure sex with the Galra is spicier than with plain old humans.”

“I’ve only been with you,” Keith admitted.

“Only with me?!” Lance straightened his back. “Well, I kind of thought that you didn’t do it often, but… nobody at all? For ten years?!”

“Too much fuss,” Keith muttered, before he realized how that sounded.

But Lance didn’t get offended, he only laughed.

“Yeah, it wasn’t much fuss with me!” he hiccuped. “You only had to ask politely… Although, come to think of it, you weren’t polite at all! Man, I’ve some low standards! Next time I’ll at least make you say please.”

“Is it too early for the next time?” Keith asked hopefully. “Please?”

Lance laughed some more. “Such eloquence, I can’t possibly resist!”

Keith wanted to ask, “but you’re not going to sleep with anybody else while we’re together, right?”, except that would definitely sound offensive, as if he didn’t trust Lance. Of course, Lance would never do such a thing, they only need to have a clear and honest conversation about their expectations.

Keith’s expectations was that he wanted whatever Lance was ready to give him. He’d even try to handle an open relationship if Lance insisted; he’d hate it, but for Lance he might try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, guys, I planned to put here a note that you should never believe when someone says before an impromptu sex that they are clean, because, surprise, even good and reliable people can genuinely forget they have not very serious, but pretty much incurable diseases, like some viruses and what not. I even wanted to tell a personal anecdote on this topic, where this forgetful jerk was I. But I won't, because, first, something nightmarish happened and I don't feel like talking much, and, second, this fic is not popular and I doubt someone would derive their sexual education from it!
> 
> Also, re:something awful happened (not to me, I'm alright for now), so I don't know if I will be able to post next week. Or maybe I'll post more as a distraction, if my beta finds the time, who knows.


	8. Chapter 8

Keith was woken up by nearby movement and a rustling of clothes. Blinking sleepily, he raised up on an elbow, trying to untangle himself from under a too-heavy blanket. How on Earth could Lance sleep like that in such heat?

Speaking of Lance, he was already awake and putting on his clothes, obviously getting ready to go somewhere. It was still dark outside, the sky barely colored with a hint of blue.

“Don’t wake up,” Lance sat on the edge of the bed. “Why are you waking up? It’s too early.”

“Too hot,” Keith complained, kicking the blanket aside.

It was maybe a little bit too chilly without the blanket, he was probably going to have trouble falling asleep again. Or not. He still felt really tired.

“Yes, you are,” Lance chuckled fondly and covered Keith with something much lighter than a blanket. “To be fair, you’ve been clinging to me all night long. You’re an octopus.” Soft lips touched Keith’s temple. “I’m off for a bit to milk the cows, then I have one other thing to do. It’s a surprise.”

“It’s not a surprise if you tell me beforehand,” Keith muttered.

“That’s the best kind of surprise,” Lance said convincingly. “I just didn’t want you to wake up before I returned, and decide that I’ve run away.”

“Lance, I’m in your room,” Keith mumbled, wrapping himself in this unknown soft cloth Lance provided; it smelt like him. “Where could you possibly go?”

“To Proxima Centauri? Ok, I gotta go, or the cows won’t be happy.”

One more pat on his shoulder, and Lance disappeared, while Keith sank back to sleep, like a stone in the pond. The only thought that lingered on the edge of his consciousness was the question of how Lance had that much energy. They barely slept last night because of all the talking and sex, he was supposed to be almost dead to the world like Keith was himself…

Then beneath his eyelids he saw the planets orbiting Proxima Centauri, and Lance flying by riding a pink lion, decorated with camomiles. “Race me, samurai!” he shouted. “The last one is doing the dishes!”

Keith woke up once again, when the house started to smell like freshly baked bread. He didn’t really open his eyes, just thought it was probably time to get up, and then Cosmo came along and curled so cozily at his feet. And everybody knows it’s an unspoken rule that when a pet lies on your legs, you immediately lose the will to get up, especially if you had a sleepless night. There should be a law somewhere about it, like Newton's law.

“Lance, you lazy ass! I get that you have a friend staying over, but you can’t ditch your chores without telling anyone!” An indignant voice complained right above his ear, and suddenly someone yanked away that thing Lance gave him instead of a blanket.

Keith blinked, sitting up on the bed. There was no Cosmo in sight, the room was brightly lit by mid-morning sun, which wasn’t supposed to hit the floor at quite that angle — right, because he was in Lance’s room, not in a guest bedroom. Lance’s sister Rachel was standing in front of the bed, beet red, and unconvincingly covering her eyes with her palms, her fingers spread wide.

“K-keith…” she stuttered. “I’m so sorry!”

She quickly turned around.

Keith looked down at himself and felt his cheeks reddening too: he had been sleeping in Lance’s bed completely naked, not counting colorful hickies, adorning his shoulders, chest and neck. Lance wasn’t the only one who enjoyed being bitten.

“Where is Lance?” asked Rachel without turning back.

“Milking the cows?”

“What cows! It’s nine in the morning!”

At this point Keith’s sleep-befuddled brain started to actually work. Having wrapped the blanket-like thing around himself — it was a plaid crocheted throw-on — Keith lowered his feet on the floor.

“He left before dawn. He said he was going to milk the cows and then go somewhere else, he had a thing to do…”

“Ah!” Rachel’s shoulders relaxed. “Then I know where he went. He’ll be back shortly.”

“So, he didn’t milk the cows after all?”

“Well, no, he did. I just couldn’t find him anywhere so I figured that it was Luis. And Lance is probably at the monastery, he often goes there!” Rachel said with a cheer that seemed a bit forced to Keith. “We’ve already had breakfast, but mom left some fresh bread for you and Lance. And we have milk, and boiled eggs. I can make you sandwiches, if you like.”

“No, thank you, I’ll do it myself a bit later. I have to work out first.”

Warming up didn’t take Keith much time: the heat was exhausting, so he decided he could slack off a bit. Even Cosmos, who was typically unbothered by the weather, lied down in the shadow with his tongue out.

So, Keith cut the exercise short and finished in less than his usual hour. After that it was time for breakfast. It seemed a little odd to ransack Lance’s family kitchen, but no more odd than to fish for shrimp in the communal pond on Oriogos 14. Except, deep inside Keith felt that the communal pond would be more familiar.

It all would be less awkward if Lance were here.

Where did he go after all? What kind of monastery? And why? Could it be that he felt obligated to pray for atonement? For what sins?

Keith muddily remembered that Lance promised him a surprise in the morning, but he had no idea what kind of surprise it could be.

When he finished the sloppy excuse for a sandwich, Lidia stepped into the kitchen.

“Ah, Keith! Good, I was looking for you. Can you help me with something? I need to paint the shed, but I’m terrible with stairs.”

Keith nodded. He felt relieved Lidia didn’t say anything about him waking up naked in Lance’s room this morning, even though she obviously knew about it, and would promise her to help with anything. Alas, he doubted he’d be of much use in such heat.

Lidia seemed perfectly content to be working outside in a long-sleeved shirt and old jeans, without so much as rolling up sleeves or legs. Keith was sweating buckets in his T-shirt and Lance’s long swim trunks, which he hadn’t returned yesterday. If not for the trunks, he’d wear his Marmoran suit, which had climate control, but just the visual that could remind others of old hardships would be trouble in this peaceful place. Years of conditioned air ruined his heat tolerance, anyway; he supposed he’d better get it back.

Lidia was a good work partner: she didn’t distract him with aimless chatting, but gave short and useful instructions on what she needed done and how. Keith expected an awkward conversation over his relationship with Lance, but she never asked about it.

But she asked him another question, when Keith was nearly done with his (upper) part of the wall. “Listen, Keith… Feel free not to answer if I’m being nosy, but is everything alright at your work?”

Keith would never have expected Lance’s mother to be interested in the dealings of Blades of Marmora Foundation, so he froze with his brush in the air.

“Everything is alright,” he said. “Do you know what I do for a living?”

“Yes, you’re the head of a charity fund,” Lidia nodded.

“Not exactly, we’re a humanitarian relief organization,” the ‘human’ in ‘humanitarian’ was a very loose term. “And I’m not exactly the only one in charge, we have a board. Things are going alright, well, we lost two ships recently, but no casualties…” One party in the conflict opened fire right at the time when the Blades were delivering supplies to the refugees in the demilitarized zone. Keith and Zethrid were, frankly, glad for a chance to show these fools that ‘Blades’ in their name was not just a homage to the glorious past.

“Sounds awful,” Lidia shook her head, her eyes genuinely worried. “But you are alright, aren’t you?”

“Yes, everything is perfect,” Keith smiled at her. “Not taking into account how my deputies were glad to send me on vacation.”

Lidia smiled in turn.

“And… is everything else alright too? I mean, besides work.”

“Yeah, I’m completely fine.”

“And you haven’t lost anyone recently? Is all your family well?”

This was an even stranger question, and Keith felt a pang of worry. He didn’t have a lot of family. Shiro, mum and Kolivan (to some extent), Hunk, Pidge and Lance. That’s all. Maybe Lidia knew something he didn’t?

“As far as I know, everybody is alright,” Keith lowered his brush. “Lidia, what are you getting at?”

Lidia sighed and patted his knee (he was still standing on a ladder). “Don’t mind me, just silly motherly worries.”

“Well, no way, we can’t leave it at that,” Keith climbed down to the ground, put the brush into the bucket and crossed his hands on his chest. “Please finish your thought.”

Lidia put down her brush too and sat on the low bench at the wall of the shed. “I’m worried for Lance,” she said after a short pause. “I was so upset when we found out about Allura dying! Me and my husband, we were ready to call her daughter one day,” she sighed sadly. “So, I thought, Lance was going to be in mourning for a long time, and he might never recover. He is just like his father, the one true love kind of man. But then this other girl appeared, Lisa, our neighbor. I thought, might it be the one..? But… then… how would I put it…” she hesitated. “Maybe it’s not my place to tell…”

“I know about Lisa,” Keith said, and added after a brief pause, “and about Ben.”

“Ah!” Lidia seemed relieved. “Then you do understand, right? Lisa was always wearing her awful headscarf, no matter how hot it was, and long sleeves too. And then she and Lance got together, and she started to smile, and laugh, and there was light in her eyes, for the first time since I met her! She even started wearing dresses with an open back. Then she decided to study agronomy with olkari, because they didn’t have much luck with their farm, they were city folks, she and her parents… Well, she met someone there, and that was all. She has been living with that olkari ever since, and her parents sold the farm, or just abandoned it, I don’t think anybody buys land quite yet. They returned to the city. I asked Lance if he was alright with that. And he said, mom, we were just friends, neither of us needed anything permanent. And he was smiling, you know that smile…”

“I know,” Keith nodded. He was all too aware.

“So then there was Ben. A very nice guy. He was stuttering all the time. A self-taught engineer, a magic touch, as my husband says, but so meek he could never really argue with anything! Toivo was very happy with him, he said, he had a talent to build spaceships, not repair harvesters. But very low self-esteem, really sad. I was sure then that Lance found someone permanent at last, and it was a mechanic too, good to have in the family, you know? But no. I’m not sure if they were dating or anything, but it lasted less than half a year, and then I realized Ben had stopped stuttering, and then he found another job, somewhere far from here, with better prospects. He sent Lance letters afterwards. Last time he wrote he was working in a Garrison’s shipyard.”

“I see,” said Keith. The picture of Lance’s previous relationships that he had painted for Keith last night suddenly shifted and rearranged before his inner eye.

“So I was thinking,” Lidia was looking up at Keith, her eyes the same shade of blue as Lance’s. “Did you come here for his sake? Or for your own?”

Keith had to think about the answer. Did he come because he himself was miserable or because he wanted to help Lance, and be with him for the sake of just being with him, not because his life lacked something?

“For the both of us,” he answered at last.

Because his life didn’t lack anything, not really. Except maybe Lance himself.

Lidia chuckled. “Good answer! God, you should have seen how outraged Lance was, all those years ago, when Veronica asked if you were available!”

“What?!” Keith thought he misheard something. Veronica, who had been tearing down Acxa’s walls for five years straight before the former Galran general admitted that she returned her feelings, used to be interested in him?!

“Ah, it happened long ago, before the end of the war, don’t worry about it. And I’m also not sure that Veronica wasn’t just teasing Lance. Out of all my children, Veronica is the one I understand the least, although she seems the most logical…” Lidia sighed. “Or maybe not the least, come to think of it. Lance only seems transparent, but I’m not sure what he hides at the very bottom. Only God knows. So, I wish you all the luck,” she suddenly gave Keith an impish look. “Do you believe in God, by the way?”

Keith shook his head. Another unexpected change of topic! He knew now where Lance got the habit.

“Well, that’s okay. God will never leave those who take the right path,” with that she stood up and took her brush again. “Alright, we had our rest, back to work, darling!”

***

It was past noon, and still no sight of Lance. None of his family seemed worried in the least, although Marco noted that if Lance hikes up to the monastery in the morning, he is usually back by this time of day.

“What monastery is this?” Keith asked.

“Some ruins in the mountains. It’s completely abandoned. Lance sometimes goes there, for half a day, for a whole day if he needs to think or to be left alone,” Marco shrugged. “I think mom is afraid he is going to start living there as a hermit.”

Lance? A hermit?

Before recently, Keith would say it was impossible. He wasn’t so sure now.

What did Lance need to contemplate in the mountains? Was he already regretting what had happened between them? Or, maybe, he didn’t regret it, but needed time and space to process? What could he possibly be processing? Maybe he’d come to the conclusion that he was OK with his life as it was and Keith’s inclusion would make it too complicated?

He promised Keith a surprise in the morning. And he was yet to return.

Keith cleared his head of unnecessary doubts. “Could something happen to him in the mountains?” he asked Marco. “And why didn’t he take his phone?”

Marco shrugged. “He never takes his phone when he wants to be left alone. And he goes there pretty often, and he is always alright.”

But Keith noticed a hint of tension in his face — not full-blown worry, more like a potential one. As if Lance’s behaviour was indeed unusual.

Terry, Marco’s wife, shook her head. “Everything can happen for the first time. Maybe you two should go find him? He probably lost track of time, he won’t be offended.”

“I still need to water the juniberries…” Marco rubbed at the back of his head.

“I’ll do that,” said Rachel. “I need to submit this damned booklet by tomorrow, I have time. You should go.”

Keith already knew that Rachel, despite living with her parents, didn’t work on the farm full time. She was a graphic designer and worked online. As for Marco and his wife, they were both building contractors, sometimes working at projects far away from home for several months at a time. Silvio, Lance’s nephew and Lidia’s oldest grandkid, was at the University somewhere, he came home only for holidays. Veronica also didn’t come too often, and her visits with Axca were even more rare. Keith knew it very well, because Veronica sometimes came to him personally demanding that he give Acxa a leave of absence. (Keith never refused, because Axca worked non-stop as it was; it was usually Acxa, who was vehemently against an enforced downtime where she would be expected to socialize with people besides Veronica; she was even more of an introvert than Keith.) 

All in all, it was a rare event when almost the whole of Lance’s family was in the house. Keith was lucky (or not) that he got to see most of them.

To go up into the mountains when it was barely past noon, the hottest time of day, didn’t seem like a brilliant idea. But Marco assured Keith that it wasn’t that far away, really, and he clearly didn’t feel the least inconvenienced by the heat. Keith didn’t want to look weak, so he gloomily followed Marco, trying not to fall behind and not drink from his water bottle too often. He knew the dangers of dehydration, but drinking on the go tends to make one heavier on his feet.

Keith paid little attention to the beautiful sights surrounding them, although they were something to look at. There were endless green folds of forest-covered foothills, that every new turn of the trail showed at a fresh angle; there were the ruins of abandoned farms, covered by bindweeds; there were colorful rocks leaning above the path; there were chalky-white boulders scattered around in huge clusters in the impossibly green grass. 

He was able to catch his breath a little and get enough energy to spare for the surroundings only when the trail became not quite so steep, and the air became cooler. Having raised his gaze, Keith saw the rocky summit of the mountain that he noticed from the farm. It was much closer now, although he could tell there was still a way to go. 

The summit was enveloped in the low milky-white clouds.

“We’re not going there,” Marco caught his glance. “It’s higher than it looks, and there is no safe trail. We’d need equipment. But the monastery is right here… Hey, junior! You have guests!”

The trail made another sharp turn, and they saw what was left of the monastery — a tiny box of a church with a single tower-like structure, completely flat. Near the church there was a rusty iron column, from which a spring was falling into a stone bowl, gurgling industriously.

“Lance!” Marco shouted again. “Are you sleeping over there?”

No response.

“He’s probably dozed off. Let’s go, I know where his hideout is.”

Lance’s hideout was not in the church but in the household buildings behind it. Keith didn’t notice them at first, but in reality they looked a little less ruined. The room Lance picked for himself probably used to be the monastery’s kitchen, it still housed a big coal stove, black with soot. Near the stove, in what must have been a niche for dishes and silverware, there was a rolled up sleeping bag, a sun-powered flashlight and a box of matches. It looked like Lance really would spend the night here sometimes.

“Huh, I didn’t expect it,” Marco lifted the sleeping bag and took a sealed plastic bag from under it. “It seems like Lance hadn’t been here today.”

“Why do you say that?” Keith didn’t get it.

“Because,” Marco opened the bag, took out a tiny Hershey’s bar and handed it to Keith. “If he were here, he’d eat some of it. That’s his emergency supply, he only eats chocolate here.”

“...Because he breaks out if he eats chocolate,” Keith remembered. Lance used to always complain about it.

“Exactly,” Marco looked at Keith with the strangest expression, but in the dimly lit room Keith couldn’t quite tell what it meant. “You do know him well, don’t you?”

“He’s my friend, we went through war together,” Keith shrugged, not sure how to express it otherwise.

He couldn’t put into words the feeling of being connected to Lance, the desire to be with him, the readiness to go across a universe for that. He couldn't quite express it to Lance, nevermind his brother.

“Hmm…” Marco rubbed the back of his head again. “Huh, I’m starting to wonder where he might go then without his comm!”

“I don’t know,” Keith felt his worry expanding like an air balloon. “He said he had a surprise for me, but that he planned to return soon.”

“Then it’s especially strange… Rachel said, you spent the night in his room, right?”

Keith nodded.

“No, something doesn’t add up,” Marco decided. “He’s always a perfect gentleman, he wouldn’t disappear like that. If he wanted to get something for you, he wouldn’t dally, he’d be back already.”

“Could we have missed him?”

Marco hmmed in doubt. “There is another trail going down from here, but it’s quite rocky… more like something for mountain goats. And it ends not by our farm but by the village. Why would Lance go to the village without his comm, and by such a long route?”

“Let’s check out the goat trail,” Keith decided. “And then we’ll see.”

He immediately imagined Lance lying somewhere on the path with his leg broken and his throat hoarse, crying for help.

The trail didn’t prove much of a challenge for Keith; unlike the way up, it was Marco slowing them down. They didn’t find Lance, with a broken leg or otherwise. When they came down, it was already four. Marco called Lidia who confirmed that Lance still hadn’t returned.

To be on the safe side, they visited the bar, both stores and Toivo’s workshop. Nobody had seen Lance that day.

Then Keith at last did what he should have done from the start instead of searching fruitlessly — he called Pidge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys, things are better! This chapter is on schedule mostly because it was pretty much done last week. I didn't do anything productive past several days, being busy with worrying too much, so there might be a delay in updates somewhere down the line.
> 
> And yeah, from here on the real plot starts! :) Shit has hit the fan.


	9. Chapter 9

Keith's greeting hadn't made it past his tongue, when Pidge yelled into the comm, “It’s eleven! Or sixty five, if you’re shopping European! And I’m done helping you with your epic romance odyssey, you dumbass!”

“What?” Keith had no idea what she was talking about. “What do you mean?”

“The size!”

“...Nevermind, I don’t have time for this. Pidge, Lance is missing. I have reason to believe that he has been kidnapped.”

“What?!” gasped Marco, who was standing beside Keith.

Keith didn’t pay him any attention, because at the same time Pidge gasped into her comm. “What?!” But, unlike Marco, she immediately composed herself. “OK, copy that. What do you need?”

Keith told her the gist of the events in several curt sentences. Pidge promised to meet him in ten minutes, accompanied with her special operations group.

Keith swore under his breath. Ten minutes was not enough time to get back to the farm.

Suddenly, Cosmo appeared, as if summoned. He didn’t bother to shrink himself this time, and a wolf bigger than a horse was especially impressive on the quaint pebbled street, near a cafe where two locals were playing cards. Marco yelped when the wolf nosed Keith’s shoulder, immediately growling into the empty air above Keith’s head — a reaction to an unknown threat.

“What's that thing?!”

“It’s Cosmo. Don’t you recognize him?”

“I do! But how… and why is he that big?!”

Keith just shrugged. Coleen Holt explained to him once that Cosmo had some low-key telepathic abilities and was able to sense Keith’s mood even at great distances. She suggested that in the wild cosmic wolves felt the presence of other pack members as far as many thousand, maybe even millions of miles. They had to keep track of each other on different space rocks or on the backs of different space whales.

And of course, like every time Keith was worried or angry, Cosmo appeared by his side — naturally, in his most intimidating form to threaten any potential enemies.

Keith regretted that he didn’t call Cosmo earlier, or, better yet, take the wolf with him. But until very recently he trusted the judgement of Lance’s relatives, not thinking that Lance could be in any sort of immediate trouble — so foolish of him! That short vacation definitely made him soft and slack. Besides, Cosmo wouldn’t be able to teleport in a place he hadn’t seen; and Keith believed they needed to explore the trails in case Lance was on his way.

Meanwhile, Marco was backing away from the space beast. “Do you want to get to the farm right away?” Keith asked, grabbing his hand.

Marco nodded, obviously shell shocked. Keith, still holding his arm, grabbed Cosmo with the other hand — and the world warped around them, melting in a farmyard covered by overgrown juniberries.

Keith didn’t waste time explaining the situation to Lance’s family, leaving this to Marco. If Pidge had been precise, he had nine minutes left until her unit arrived with bioscanners. He better make use of that time. So, Keith asked Cosmo to search for Lance.

The wolf couldn’t or maybe wouldn’t teleport to where Lance was. Keith had tried to make him do that trick several times; had it worked out, it’d have been a tremendous help during missions. However, Cosmo refused to teleport to places he had never seen, except when Keith was already there. Maybe Cosmo imprinted on him when he was a puppy and there was no way around it, or maybe he didn’t really trust other people despite always appearing friendly. But even if his special abilities couldn’t be used, his sense of smell was even better than that of an ordinary dog.

Cosmo obediently sniffed Lance’s T-shirt, then lingered for a bit in his room, descended the stairs (he was still big and heavy, so the floorboards trembled under him), looked into the milkshed, and then led Keith away from the farm, but not to the mountain path up to the monastery. He chose the worn down road to the farm next door, which was obviously abandoned and uninhabited.

Lowering his nose to the ground, Cosmo came almost to the main house in the circle of rose bushes, peppered by bright red blossoms. The wolf sat down near the wooden porch where the bushes were the thickest and barked sharply.

Keith looked around.

At first glance he didn’t notice anything suspicious, except some wilting flowers, scattered on the ground near the porch. Somebody must have cut them with a garden clipper.

But then he saw that several yards farther away from him the lawn was not only flattened and crushed, but obviously burnt. As if somebody landed a not very eco-friendly planetary shuttle there.

Quiznack.

How come Keith never thought of this before?

He called Pidge again. “We’re on our way, almost there,” she started.

“Wait,” Keith cut her off. “Raise a kidnapped person alert. And make all the ships departing from Earth via teludav go through extensive search. Full biosignature scan with live examination of everything that has even a slight resemblance to Lance.” 

“Got it,” Pidge didn’t ask if Keith was sure, even though she knew full well that his order would slow down the departure queue for several hours, launching an avalanche of complaints. “Do we still need to come to you, or are you going to my place?”

“Stay on course,” Keith decided after a short hesitation. “We still need to check if Lance is in a ditch somewhere. I’m not one hundred percent sure that he was taken from Earth or even from this area.”

Having finished the call, Keith raked his fingers through his hair in frustration.

Idiot!

He had been worrying for Lance since the day before yesterday — but no, he let himself be lulled by the beautiful serenity of this damned place! He should have acted immediately, as soon as he woke up at nine in the morning and found out that Lance hadn’t returned when he promised.

Better yet, he should have gone with Lance before sundawn. He shouldn’t have let him go alone.

They could’ve taken Lance lightyears away in a planetary shuttle. The alert Pidge was going to raise was almost useless. The kidnappers had too much of a head start. Of course, ships sometimes waited in the queue to leave the Solar system for several hours, but if Keith had planned a snatch, he’d arrange everything so that he’d taken the object right before his turn for departure. He had no reason to think the bastards were stupider than him.

It was probably too late even at nine in the morning.

***

Pidge used a better shuttle than the kidnappers. Her vehicle didn’t burn the grass when it landed on the lawn near the abandoned farm (Keith asked her to go to his coordinates).

She was the first one to jump from the shuttle’s door, followed by a unilu girl with a pierced nose and a couple of uniformed space cops, unfamiliar to Keith (one was a human with Galran battle tattoos on his right cheek, the other one was most likely a human), and Ryan Kinkade. Somehow Keith didn’t expect to see anyone he knew from Atlas or the Garrison, as if all of the staff was supposed to retire together with Shiro. He knew, though, that the original MFE pilots took jobs in Pidge’s department, so it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. It still was.

The shuttle immediately took off; apparently, the pilot stayed inside. The space cops, whom Keith didn’t know, scattered around the ground. The unilu started to take samples of soil and grass, the two most-likely humans started to survey the house.

“The shuttle will look for Lance from above, using BLIP technologies,” Pidge said to Keith. “If he is nearby, we’ll find him.”

“Understood.”

“Talk to me, what has been going on here?”

Keith looked at Kinkade, frowning. The guy smiled with the corner of his lips. “You know me,” he said in a light tone. “Plus, right now I’m on duty.”

“Yes,” Pidge confirmed, “we’re going to be discreet as fuck. What kind of shit has Lance found himself in again?”

It didn’t take long to briefly describe the events of the last two days. Keith didn’t leave out anything, he mentioned both their visit to the beach and the fact that he and Lance had sex. It might be important. Keith knew all too well that sometimes the smallest detail can mean success or failure of the most vital operation. So he suppressed the awkwardness and the ingrained habit to never share the details of his (non-existent up to now) personal life, and unloaded everything as it was, trying to keep it short and to the point nevertheless.

The more he talked, the rounder Pidge’s eyes became. “Quiznack, classic Lance!” she exclaimed. “As soon as he falls in love, everything goes to hell!”

Keith couldn’t suppress his blush. Was Pidge really so sure that Lance was in love with him..? Keith didn’t question that Lance loved him, they had a heart to heart last night. But he thought it was a calm, smooth feeling, that was at least twelve years old (or however much it was in Lance’s own timeline). And Pidge made it sound like it was a sudden explosion of passion between the two.

“Chief, correlation does not imply causation',” Ryan shook his head.

“Yeah, I know, I know,” Pidge sighed. “But you know I had to say it!”

Indeed, even Keith realized she really had to. He, too, always expected some kind of trouble when Lance’s amorous feelings were involved.

Meanwhile, Kinkade continued, “I doubt that Keith’s romantic rivals are our suspects. I’d check those who knew or could find out about Lance’s healing powers. Have you called that doctor, Keith?”

Keith shook his head. He was going too, but Pidge arrived too fast.

“My personal favorite is Nehvar, son of Lomorr,” Pidge decided. “He kind of disappeared just in time. I’m going to check him. Ryan, Keith, go talk to Georgeivic.”

“Are you letting me join the investigation?” Keith raised his eyebrows.

He expected more arguments and was prepared to ask his mother for some kind of special diplomatic status; for that he’d won’t hesitate to beg, if necessary.

It seemed that during the years of peace he forgot that for Pidge family was always above the rules.

“It’s too hard to try keeping you out,” she snorted.

Then she hugged Keith, unexpectedly swiftly, never letting go of the pad she already started to type something on.

“It’s in my best interest to get that idiot back as soon as possible,” she mumbled, pressing her glasses into Keith’s chest. “And you’re the one that can rescue him even from a black hole, I know you.”

Cosmo chose this moment to walk up and lick Pidge’s cheek.

She laughed.

“And you have a giant teleporting wolf. This can really speed up the process, right, honeybun?” she stroked Cosmo’s nose.

***

Doctor Georgeivic was a dead end. At first, he didn’t believe that Lance disappeared and tried to call him, seemingly not trusting Keith and Kinkade. Then he got scared that his and Lance guileless schemes will come to light and harm his reputation or his hospital. And at last he assured both investigators he knew nothing about any suspects. Nobody asked him about Lance lately, nobody questioned the healings either.

“What about Nehvar, son of Lomorr?” Keith asked.

“I don’t know why you are so stuck on him!” Georgeivic wiped off sweat from his balding head. There was an ancient AC working in his small study, but the doctor was still sweating profusely. “You already asked about him yesterday… He was released from the hospital, that’s all I know! He never asked anything, I haven't heard from him since!” He was almost in tears. “I’m regretting that I agreed to deal with it! I shouldn’t have allowed Lance to heal him...”

“You mean it wasn’t your idea from the start?” Keith felt like it might be something important.

Lance never told him who exactly found out about Nehvar’s case, but from his words Keith had the impression that Georgeivic asked him to help the olkari, and Lance had been refusing for some time, not willing to risk his secret.

“Oh, hardly!” Georgeivich waved the question away as utter nonsense. “I rarely suggested a case! He took it upon himself to regularly patrol the hospital, I swear, he sensed if something was not good… My job was mostly to cover for him, so he wouldn’t attract too much attention with his healings! Damn him and his compulsive need to be a good samaritan! Less common sense than a fly!”

“So, Lance was the one who noticed the olkari’s condition and decided it was treatable?” Kinkade checked one more time.

“Yes, ten days ago, when Nehvar was transferred here.”

While Lance said that he waited two weeks before making a decision. Damn liar! OK, he probably rounded it up. But Keith started to suspect he shouldn’t believe anything Lance had said. The guy almost lived in an alternate reality.

Inside Keith, the anger and fear mixed together with a burning tenderness for the beautiful idiot. He felt lucky to be in Kinkade’s company, because he didn’t think he was capable of coming up with the right questions for Georgeivic.

But Ryan was on top of his game. He asked how often Lance helped Georgeivic and wrote down all the patients’ names (there were fewer of them than Keith suspected, but more that would be reasonable if one tried to not attract attention). Ryan also asked if the hospital staff knew about Lance, and if he had another patient planned beside the olkari.

“At the beginning I introduced him as my former student, who was writing a research paper about how medical service was organized,” Georgeivic sighed. “Our hospital might be small, but there are a lot of people working here, since we’re covering three neighbouring towns. Everybody works in shifts, many know each other by face only. I’m sure people got used to seeing him, but I don’t know if anybody knew…”

So, it was either another dead end, or a jack-pot that needed to be thoroughly investigated.

Kinkade got access to online schedules for every worker in the hospital out of Georgievic, who had it due to his position as a senior doctor. Although Georgeivic warned them that many employees swapped shifts for convenience, not always logging it into the system. The e-workflow in the hospital was barely limping along, to say the least. To know for sure when somebody was on duty you needed to compare all the rounds’ checklists and all the e-tickets, which was a workload, and a messy one at that.

“I’ll still feed it through our algorithms,” Ryan said. “And we will try to map it with the times when Lance was in the hospital. Maybe we’ll see who had the best chance to get in contact with him and figure out his secret.”

“And in the end it will be a cleaning lady from a subcontractor company, who is not on the list anywhere,” Keith muttered.

Before saying this, he opened a door for Kinkade, whose arms were full holding the tablets, and noticed such a cleaning lady in the hall. A woman in a blue coverall was mopping the corners after an old automatic cleaner.

Kinkade sighed. “Did you think that police work always comes down to hot pursuit? I seriously envy Jim — he transferred to deep-space missions and doesn’t have a single problem in his life!”

All in all, their visit to the hospital didn’t accomplish anything, except helping Keith curb his anxiety and feel at least nominally useful, as opposed to an idiot who allowed the most precious thing to be stolen from under his nose.

“I admit I know nothing about the police work,” Keith said, when they exited to a personnel parking lot, where Cosmo was patiently waiting for them. “But I heard that you need to find a kidnapped person before the first forty eight hours. Is it true?”

Kinkade thought about his answer a bit too long. “No,” he said firmly at last.

Keith was not fooled by this firmness.

***

The makeshift operational center was set up right in the living room of Lance’s family farmhouse.

Keith would never even recognize the place: an airy, spacious room turned into something akin to the quarters of a Galaxy Police space station. The heavy curtains cut the light, lending better visibility to dozens of holographic screens that were hovering in the air above numerous pads and notebooks. The screens were towering up to the very ceilings, hiding the white walls and pictures of Cuban scenery in plain wooden frames.

All the screens were displaying Lance, giving Keith an unsettled feeling.

OK, maybe not all, but most of them.

It was Lance in Voltron armor and with a fake-ish smile aiming at charming but not quite getting there. The very young Lance in Garrison’s uniform near the flag of United Earth, with a shellshocked expression typical for official pictures. An older Lance, with blue marks under his eyes, in civilian clothes, beside Rachel, who was holding a magister diploma. Just Lance’s face, big and sharp. A digital model of a body, slowly rotating in the air; the model was constructed out of greenish-blue mesh, without skin or face, but Keith had been studying this body for hours with his hands and lips, of course he knew that this, too, was Lance.

So many different Lances that Keith had an uncomfortable association with a funeral slideshow.

Pidge was sitting in the middle of this holographic mess, eyes glued to her monitor, and mechanically biting from a gigantic empanada in her hand — Keith belatedly remembered it was called a “pirozhki”. The pirozhkis were lying in a small heap on a big plate on a coffee table, which was the only furniture betraying the civil nature of the living room. The soft coaches could belong to a police facility too, Keith saw such examples.

“Ryan already sent me everything you got from the doctor, it wasn’t much,” Pidge said, not raising her head. “Kirk and Lacey raided the neighbors. They didn’t find much either, if you don’t count these snacks. You can eat them, they’re safe, I checked.”

“They’ve been to Snezhana?” Keith guessed.

“Yeah, I even talked to her on the comm… After all, she was the last one to see Lance except his family. A crazy group,” Pidge clearly approved. “Seriously, it’s the first time I see a poly relationship with five members all living together, if they’re not some stupid cult. They don’t have Lance locked in their basement, that’s for sure, their last car trip was to the beach and back yesterday. Everything else is checking out. There are no other close neighbours, there is nothing suspicious in the town, everything is quiet… Well, it’s not quiet anymore, everybody is already discussing that Lance is missing and two Voltron paladins are busy searching for him. The local news site has tried to post a story, but I red-lighted them for now — under the pretence that it might interfere with the investigation.”

“So we did give away his identity,” after some deliberation, Keith took a pirozhki.

He didn’t know when his time to act would come. There is nothing worse than to be forced to fly or fight on an empty stomach.

The filling was something dairy and crumbly, kind of like cheese in cheesecakes, but not. Keith noticed this automatically, as he always analyzed unknown substances he had to try. He didn’t sense its taste and wouldn’t be able to tell if it was sweet or sour.

“We might not, though,” Pidge answered Keith’s earlier question. “You can’t imagine how many facts people are ready to explain away if these facts don’t fit what they’re used to… I’m looking through a local chat channel right now, people here are already developing theories that Lance has been your or my boyfriend since school… and everybody is waiting for the Lance Mcclain, a handsome hero, the author of ‘The Pink Book of Joy’, to appear, with bated breath!”

“Mcclain…” Keith thought. “Is it his last name? No, it can’t be, they are from Cuba, although they do look like they have several different ethnicities in their ancestry…”

Having seen Keith’s face, Pidge rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so surprised, that’s from the show. They got way too many things wrong. Shiro became Swedish instead of Japanese, who the heck knows why… And I was turned into a boy for some reason, but that’s irrelevant…” She cut herself off, squinted at the screen nearby and cackled. “Huh! Look, someone suggested that Lance IS the Red Paladin, but people mostly laugh! And someone else reminded them that our Lance’s real name is Alonso.”

Well, damn! Alonso! Keith had no idea.

He thought he really should have asked Pidge about his full name when he had the chance, but now it would look downright stupid.

He suppressed a scathing remark that was on the tip of his tongue, like, “Do you have something useful instead of gossip and irrelevant info?” Instead, he said, “You’ve done a lot in such a short time.”

Pidge scowled and bit into her pirozhki with the same motion as if she was ripping meat from a bone with her teeth. “Sorry for the fillers, but I’ve been waiting for the latest news about Nehvar… Because, I think, he is our boy.”

“Was he the one to kidnap Lance?” Keith froze with his own snack halfway to his mouth.

“Or he assisted. The house you and Lance visited yesterday, he sold it to a real estate agent the night before, without haggling, as soon as possible. And he chose an international dealer, not a local one, meaning he lost a great deal on the price. Even though Earth real estate is pretty cheap everywhere now except the Garrison Center. His wife, Denise Menga, yesterday quit her job at the local nuclear plant where she had had an indefinite leave of absence due to family reasons. They took a taxi to the airbus station yesterday morning, and pretty much disappeared. They hadn’t done anything in two days, hadn’t used cards. In the Olkari enclave nobody knows where Nehvar might be. They say, he has always been a loner, no close friends, no family except Denise.”

Now Keith was sincerely amazed with the speed Pidge worked.

“But that’s not all either,” the fingers of Pidge’s hand that she was not holding a snack in typed a short command, and the holoscreen displayed a shabby looking planetary shuttle. “Chi-Lu managed to deduce the parameters of the shuttle that Lance was taken with, and we’ve been able to find it! It passed teludav at eight thirty in the morning leaving to Naxoria… a-and the track was lost there. The shuttle was rented by a small firm that sells fertilizers. We’ve reached them — the guys either are perfect liars, or honestly have no idea their name has been used. Anyway, Nehvar, son of Lomorr, was one of the subcontractors for this firm!”

Keith swore.

“And it gets even more interesting,” Pidge continued. “My guys already did a preliminary search in Nehvar’s former house. We didn’t expect to find anything there since they sold it, but to be on the safe side… In short, there is this bindweed on the house, with orange flowers…”

“There is,” Keith remembered the plant.

“This is not a simple bindwind. This is fucking complex as hell bindweed. I have no idea why Nehvar hadn’t destroyed it when leaving. Chi-Lu is transporting the sample to our lab now, but it’s already clear it’s some kind of bio-neurotechnologies prohibited by the Coalition.”

Keith swore much more colorfully.

“What was he doing in this old farm anyway?!” he asked, meaning Lance, not the elusive olkari.

Pidge understood and lifted her eyes at Keith — for the first time since the beginning of their conversation. Her face looked sympathetic but also a little mocking. “Didn’t you realize? He went to get roses for you, dumbass! They are your favorite flowers, after all.”

“What?!” Keith felt as if his ears failed him.

He didn’t care for roses much. In fact, he never really thought about any flowers, unless they were part of alien human-eating flora. Well, he supposed, juniberries smelled good, but still, Keith didn’t quite like their overabundance on Lance’s farm. It was unnerving.

So, even seeing those cut roses on the ground near the abandoned farm, Keith never thought they were intended for him — not for a second.

“It’s in your personal file,” Pidge explained slowly and carefully, as if to a very young child. “You filled in the questionnaire when you entered the Garrison. Your favourite flower — rose, favourite animal — hippo.”

Keith faintly remembered his twelve year old self during the psychological evaluation, more cynical than a child should be and angry at the whole world.

“I was writing stuff at random, just so they’d leave me alone!” Again, he felt torn between laughing and crying. “I love dogs! Who asks a future pilot stupid things like that anyway?!”

Pidge facepalmed.

Keith’s next thought was that they were all lucky Lance didn’t try to bring him a pet hippo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait!  
> I was incapacitated with worry about my family situation AND freaked out about the coronavirus, while my beta was incapacitated with the worry of the coronavirus AND freaked out about her family situation. Not the best combination all in all :D
> 
> _
> 
> As for me, I had a terrible month, when my husband was diagnosed first with pneumonia, than the diagnosis changed to bronchitis which is slightly better; then he was hospitalized for a week, then he was released but immediately became sick again, and this time no treatment helped for a week before we changed the clinic; then he got better (I desperately hope so, at least!!), but he still has some problems, and he needs to be in self-isolation because he has high risk of having complications if he catches corona now, and I'm 7 months pregnant and can't bring shit from a grocery store (too heavy!), and delivery works so bad you need to order your groceries 2 weeks prior. And we don't have any relatives nearby. And no car, since we never needed one before. So, yeah, fun time for everybody.


End file.
